


This is Not my Beautiful House

by cyankelpie



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Amnesia, Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crepes, Crowley doesn't recognize Aziraphale, Crowley is that one excited kid in science class, Established Relationship, Eventual Fluff, Fake marriage (but not actually), Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M, Memory Loss, Mistaken Identity, Nobody has complete information, Paris (City), Post-Apocalypse, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:27:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 33,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23194714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyankelpie/pseuds/cyankelpie
Summary: Crawly wakes up in a place he doesn't recognize. The last thing he remembers is being ordered to "make some trouble" up on Earth. Someone has dressed him in ridiculously tight clothes and cut off all his hair, and now there's an angel calling him by a different name and being nicer to him than anyone ever has.Clearly, there's been some catastrophic misunderstanding.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 731
Kudos: 1007
Collections: Aspec-friendly Good Omens





	1. You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack

**Author's Note:**

> Still stuck on the amnesia trope after [my last fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22871122/chapters/54664642), and the current apocalypse has given me plenty of time to pursue my questionable fic ideas, so. Here it is.
> 
> The title is in reference to [Once in a Lifetime](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IsSpAOD6K8) by the Talking Heads because the song was too applicable. Yes every chapter title is going to be a line from this song. No I'm not sorry.

Crawly woke up inside what appeared to be a very large box. It wasn’t hell—that was clear from the light filtering through the square holes in the wall and the general lack of odor. He sat up and blinked around. Was this what Earth was like? It was a great deal smaller than he had imagined, and appeared to be made almost entirely of rectangles. All the right-angles and parallel lines hurt his eyes. Beelzebub would have appreciated the order, but Crawly preferred things thrown about lazily. It had been the subject of many complaints back at the office.

Something didn’t feel right. He looked down. What the heaven was he wearing? Some kind of second skin? It was wildly uncomfortable, whatever it was. He struggled with the clothes for a moment until he worked out how to undo the clasps, and then peeled them off. There were so many different pieces. Whatever happened to the good old-fashioned approach of wrapping yourself in one big sheet? For that matter, where was the robe he’d been wearing before, and who had decided to dress him in this ridiculous getup and—and _where was all his hair?_

He looked around for a reflective surface, found a shiny black rectangle on the wall, and scrambled over to check his reflection. With a dismayed noise, he ran both hands through the red tuft that was all that remained of his long curls. Some bastard had cut it all off. Thank Satan everything else was still the same, at least: same too-tall skeleton, same slitted yellow eyes. Still the same old Crawly. His corporation hadn’t completely changed on the trip over. Just, someone had given him a makeover and cut off all his hair.

Now that he knew he was at least still himself, he turned to get a better look at the place he had landed in. One of the walls was made of concave rectangles, filled with other, smaller rectangles, and also a very bizarre assortment of objects. He picked up one, a shiny, transparent globe with a colorful scene in the middle. White specks stirred up when he moved it. He shook the whole thing violently and grinned to himself as the white stuff swirled around. He did it a few more times, and decided he liked Earth so far.

He turned to the rest of the room. An oval-shaped table sat in the middle, in front of something that could only be described as a large and vaguely-rectangular lump, covered in other, smaller lumps. He picked one up and his eyes widened at how soft it was. “Look at that,” he muttered, compressing it and letting it spring back several times. “Amazing.”

After barely a moment’s hesitation, Crawly threw himself onto the bigger lump and found that it, too, was remarkably soft. He sank into it, gave a yell, and flailed around, half-afraid that it might swallow him up. Luckily, he managed to keep himself from drowning, and pushed himself up to a sitting position. The soft thing bounced underneath him and squeaked a little, and he bounced a couple more times. He decided he liked Earth quite a lot.

Something glinted on the floor where Crowley had woken up, and he leaned over to try to get as good a look at it as he could without leaving the soft-sitting-thing. It was small, and shiny, and complicated-looking. With a grunt of complaint, he pried himself off his seat and went over to investigate better. The spindly folded-up thing didn’t make any more sense to him up close. He folded and unfolded bits of it, but couldn’t figure out what they were for.

That was when he saw the other rectangle.

One of them, anyway. There were so many rectangles on Earth that he could hardly count them all. But this rectangle held an image which, on close inspection, had him in it. He picked it up off the shelf for a closer look. Yep, that was him all right, and someone else he didn’t recognize. He was wearing the stupid clothes again, and there was something covering his eyes. But what caught his attention was that he was _smiling._ Really smiling. He looked…happy.

A noise startled him, and he dropped it. Part of it broke loudly. “…Crowley?” called a voice, and he heard footsteps coming towards him.

Dammit, he had a job to do, and he’d let himself get distracted and forgotten that there were other people on Earth too. How did they know he was here already? Wait, no, that hadn’t been his name. It had a different vowel in it. He could still keep his cover—His eyes, that was the giveaway, he needed to hide his eyes—Remembering the foldy thing in his hand, he unfolded it and shoved it onto his face. So that was what it was for. Good thing he had found the picture-rectangle.

“Crowley, there you are.”

The voice was much closer than Crawly expected. He spun around, did a double-take, and scrambled back against the wall. It was the other man from the picture, only he wasn’t a man. “Angel,” said Crawly blankly.

There were angels on Earth? Well, of course there were angels on Earth. She had sent some down to watch over Her creation. Crawly ought to have expected as much. But he hadn’t, and he was off guard, and this angel had the perfect opportunity to smite him, or send him back downstairs, or, or…

He didn’t look like he was about to do any of those things. He just looked at Crawly, puzzled and completely unafraid. “My dear, where are your clothes?”

My dear? That was a new one for Crawly. Well, but he was supposed to be a human, and not a demon, and he supposed they had to be dear to somebody. He pointed at the little pile of black where he had left them.

The angel looked. “Yes, but why?”

“Why not?” said Crawly, and now he was talking to an angel. He was talking to an angel who was, if not friendly, at least not remotely hostile. Well, why would he be hostile, if he thought Crawly was one of the humans he was here protecting?

“I heard a crash,” said the angel, and then noticed the rectangle and the sparkling broken shards on the ground. “Oh, goodness—” He waved Crawly away. “You’re not even wearing shoes, dear. Stay back. I’ll clean it up.”

He also had on a rather elaborate and ridiculous ensemble, complete with a pair of triangles under his chin. It didn’t look quite as uncomfortable as Crawly’s had been, but still awfully restrictive. Was this just the fashion on Earth? Had his comfortable sheet changed into this on purpose when he crossed over? If he was going to keep his cover as not-a-demon, he supposed he was going to need to blend in. Regretfully, he walked back over to the black heap of clothes and started to put them back on. He didn’t remember having any triangles, though. Should he have? Were the triangles required?

The angel fetched some sort of cleaning equipment and whisked up all the sharp shiny stuff. “There,” he said, dumping it all into yet another rectangle. “All taken care of—Oh, Crowley, there’s no need to worry,” he said, turning back to the demon. “The photograph is fine. We can always get new glass for the frame.”

Crawly nodded, trying to look like this was all expected, while filing away the unfamiliar word “photograph” and making a mental note to somehow find out what it meant, and why he and an angel might be in one. “Right,” he said. “Good. Very good.”

He looked down at the shirt in his hands and realized that, while he had somehow managed to get it off, he had no idea how to get it back on. He worked out where he thought his arms were supposed to go, put them through, and then pulled the whole thing over his head. That turned out to be a mistake. His arms waved uselessly above his head, trapped in a tube of cloth. He couldn’t see.

“Goodness, Crowley.” Something tugged the shirt down around his torso, and then that angels’ face was there again in front of his. “What’s gotten into you today? Why…why are you wearing these?” He reached for the thing covering the demon’s eyes.

Instinctively, Crawly jerked away from his hand.

The angel looked disappointed. “Dearest, you know you don’t have to wear your glasses at home. I do so love to look at your eyes.”

Crawly tried not to sputter. So it was _dearest_ now, and, and _home,_ and he felt certain that if the angel knew what his eyes really looked like he would not be nearly so keen to expose them. _Glasses._ That’s what he had called them. “Rather keep the _glasses_ on,” he said, trying out the new word. “I like them.”

“Are you feeling quite all right?” Now he looked worried. About _Crawly._ He couldn’t remember the last time someone had actually worried about him. “You’re behaving rather strangely.”

So he was starting to notice. Crawly tried to swallow his rapid heartbeat. “Feeling, er, bit under the weather.” Maybe the angel would be satisfied with that and stop questioning him.

Instead, he stepped forward and laid his palm against Crawly’s forehead before the demon had time to step back. “You don’t feel feverish,” he said. “What seems to be the trouble? Is your head hurting?”

Crawly considered stepping away from the hand, but that might fuel the angel’s suspicion. He stayed put. “Everything’s, er, bit fuzzy.”

The angel’s hand moved to his _cheek_ and patted it far more gently than anyone had touched Crawly in a long time. “Perhaps you’d better have a lie down,” he said. “Sleep always seems to do you some good.”

“Mnyeah,” said Crawly stupidly. Sleep? Was that a human thing? Was the angel going to notice if he didn’t know how to do it?

The angel took his hand and led him through a rectangular hole in the wall into another large box. This one was mostly occupied by something even larger and softer-looking than the big thing in the other room. Crowley was seized with an intense desire to leap onto it and start jumping. This did not, unfortunately, seem to coexist with the phrase “lie down.”

“Come on, then, dear.” The angel pulled down a sheet and patted the soft thing.

Crawly sat down where the angel had indicated, and then stretched out. Oh, it was very soft indeed. He resisted the urge to let himself sink into it with thoroughly undemonic sigh. Then he figured what the heaven, nobody here knew he was a demon, and did it anyway.

The angel pulled the sheet back over him. “You can hardly sleep comfortably with those on,” he said. Crowley realized what he meant and closed his eyes a moment before the angel pulled the foldy—the _glasses_ off his face. “Goodnight, dearest.” Gentle fingers brushed back Crawly’s hair, and Something warm touched his hairline. A hand? No, a—a _kiss_? “I love you.”

Crawly barely managed to keep it together long enough for the angel to leave the box and close the rectangle. Then he flung back the sheet, sprang upright, and rubbed at the place where the angel’s lips had touched him. “What,” he gasped, “the _fuck_.”

The moment the door shut, Aziraphale’s expression changed to one of intense concern. Something was very wrong with Crowley, however much he might try to downplay it. He had not been acting like himself in the slightest. And the way he refused to take off his glasses—Aziraphale couldn’t remember him ever doing that when they were in private. Was something wrong with his eyes, perhaps? But why would he be so reticent about the problem?

It was plain, at least, that he wasn’t well. Angels and Demons couldn’t catch human diseases, technically, but they had both discovered that they were not immune to psychosomatic disorders. Aziraphale couldn’t think of anything that might be causing Crowley enough stress for that, but perhaps something had happened that he didn’t know about. While he was out at the shop today, for instance. But he had only been gone for a handful of hours. Perhaps there were supernatural ailments that could harm a demon, and Crowley had somehow caught one. If that were the case, Aziraphale was at a loss as to how to proceed, since he had never encountered anything similar before.

Speculation would get him nowhere. He needed to know the source of Crowley’s unwellness if he was going to help. Though he didn’t know where to start on his own, perhaps someone else could help him.

Returning to the sitting room, Aziraphale found Crowley’s cell phone on the table and frowned. Crowley hardly went anywhere without his cell phone, not even into another part of the cottage. He must be in a truly bad state. Fretting violently, Aziraphale unlocked the phone and dialed a number from his contacts.

Anathema picked up. “Hello?”

“Ah—Mis Device! So glad to have caught you. I wasn’t certain if you had classes at the moment.”

There was a guilty pause. “Well.”

“Miss Device, you _are_ attending all your classes?”

“Is something wrong?” Anathema asked, changing the subject. “You sound worried.”

Aziraphale swallowed. He supposed he must. He hadn’t been this worked up in quite a while. “It’s Crowley,” he said. “He’s, er, ill. Or something. I’m not sure, but I thought perhaps a witch doctor such as yourself might be able to help—”

“I keep telling you, that’s not the kind of doctorate I’m getting.”

“Well, you must know of something,” said Aziraphale hopefully. “You dabbled quite a bit in the occult. Are you aware of any demonic illnesses, or…”

“Well, witchcraft doesn’t normally involve _healing_ demons,” said Anathema. “But I can see what I have. Does Crowley not know himself? He’s the resident expert on demons.”

Aziraphale leaned his head against the bookcase. How could he explain that Crowley didn’t seem to want to talk to him about it? “He’s been on Earth for such a long while,” he said. “He doesn't know much about any epidemics that might have gone around in hell.”

“Hm.” Anathema’s tone suggested that she didn’t quite believe him, but she didn’t press it. “What are his symptoms? I can try to look for something targeted to that.”

What were his symptoms? He’d looked so— _blank._ Like he was in shock. He had barely seemed to recognize Aziraphale. “Disorientation,” said Aziraphale. “And, er—perhaps something to do with his eyes.”

“Got it,” said Anathema. “I’ll see what I can find, and I can bus over this weekend to take a look at him. How’s Sunday?”

“Just fine. Thank you so much, dear girl.”

“Don’t thank me just yet.”

Right. It was too early to get his hopes up. “Thank you for the trouble,” he corrected himself. “I will let you know if his condition improves.”

“Alright. See you on Sunday.”

Aziraphale hung up. He was rather hoping he wouldn’t have to see her on Sunday. Perhaps he was overreacting. Maybe Crowley would wake up from his nap feeling right as rain. He’d come shambling out of the bedroom in the morning with a mumbled, “Morning, angel,” head straight to the kitchen to fix his coffee, and perk up straightaway after he had drunk it. And then he could drive them both to their brunch reservation, nearly killing both of them in the process, and Aziraphale would scold him, and Crowley would brush him off with a not-very-demonic grin. Brunch would be an event in itself, and then they could return home where Crowley would lie in Aziraphale’s lap as he read to both of them, or maybe Crowley would bake something marvelous, or maybe they would just sit and talk for hours…

With a sigh, Aziraphale set down his phone. It had barely been ten minutes, but he already wanted to open the door and check on Crowley. But he couldn’t have fallen asleep yet, and an intrusion at this point would only interrupt the process. He would need to wait a little while. He needed to distract himself.

Aziraphale busied himself by making tea and then retired to the sitting room, where he took up his usual place on the sofa and resumed his book. Over the next three hours, he barely managed to get through as many pages. One hand itched for a head of silky read hair to sift through, and the rest of the sofa was cold and empty without Crowley in it, and he couldn’t stop thinking about the way Crowley had flinched when Aziraphale tried to take his sunglasses.


	2. And you may find yourself in another part of the world

“That angel’s cracked,” Crawly muttered, pacing the length of the box. “ _Cracked_.”

It just didn’t make sense. Angels were beings of love, sure, but not like _that_ , unless there had been some drastic policy changes in heaven since Crowley’s departure. And a human, too, or at least Crawly had assumed—Surely the angel hadn’t mistaken him for—

No, no. He ran his hands over his face. “Crowley” wasn’t an angelic name. So Crowley must be human. Was that even allowed, for angels? Didn’t humans die? What would that even be like for him when…Well, that was just a disaster waiting to happen.

Nobody had ever treated Crawly like the angel just had, not even before the Fall. Well, but it wasn’t for him, was it? All that affection was for this person Crowley, who the angel had somehow mistaken him for. He must have some sort of face blindness. Or maybe regular blindness. And he’d somehow failed to realize that the demon’s voice was not that of his Crowley. Or maybe just… “Cracked,” Crawly muttered again.

Well, so what should Crawly do? Report this downstairs? He could say he’d deceived an angel, and leave out the bit where it was on accident. Even Beelzebub might be impressed, and the Council would probably jump at the chance to deceive an angel. They’d send Crawly back to keep the act up, possibly get rid of this Crowley altogether, and lead the angel further astray…

No. Crawly sighed into his hands. There was no need for that. The angel was harmless. And if he had already lost his mind, heaven probably wouldn’t consider him much of a loss. Crawly would just creep away before the angel realized what had happened.

Which raised another question: how did one get out of these boxes? He wasn’t particularly keen on leaving the same way as the angel, in case he was still on the other side of that rectangle. He stepped toward the smaller, transparent, lighted rectangles on the walls to see if they might provide an exit. He looked through, and the world opened up in front of him.

So _this_ was Earth. Crawley pressed his palms flat to the transparent stuff and drank in all the color and variety and activity. The ceiling was so high here, and it was a clear blue, with little white bits that—were they—yes, they were _moving,_ entirely by themselves, all the way up there. There were bushy green things large and small, and boxes with pointy tops, with little splashes of color under the rectangles on their walls.

And people! Oh, the people. Crawly hadn’t realized there were quite so many humans on Earth. He counted at least five. One was walking along towing, or being towed by, an excited puffball on a string, and three smaller humans zipped past on weird contraptions powered by circles. Another one was kneeling in the dirt doing Satan only knew what, surrounded by tools and little green things. The excited puffball grew even more excited and went to go see, and the person they were towing struggled to pull them back. The humans looked similar enough to angels and demons, but there was something different about them, something free and chaotic and fantastic. Crawly needed to know more.

Experimentally, he tapped the transparent stuff with a nail. It looked like the same material from the rectangle he had broken, which meant it wouldn’t be hard to break. He looked around, picked up something heavy and bulbous with a cloth shade at one end, and was about to throw it when he realized how loud that was going to be. If possible, he’d prefer to escape without attracting the angel’s attention. Did this work the same way as the other wall rectangle, where he could swing it forward and create an opening? There didn’t seem to be a knob. He found a little clasp at the bottom, but after undoing it, he couldn’t make the rectangle move anywhere. He sighed in frustration, wishing he wasn’t stuck in this corporation. It was so much easier to get around without it.

And then the answer was obvious. Crawly climbed back onto the soft thing and arranged the sheet the way it had been before, and then shed his corporation and floated up. That was easier than expected. He’d have to come back for the body eventually, but now he could bide his time for the right moment to escape through the other rectangle. And now he could flit about and explore Earth as he pleased.

He went straight across the street first, to figure out what the human was doing in the dirt. Nobody seemed to be able to see him in his spectral form. He supposed that made sense. He’d heard that humans were bound much more tightly to the physical plane than his kind were. He knelt down to watch the human dig little holes in the dirt and half-bury more little green things, but he still didn’t understand what it was for. To get answers more directly, he went into the human and possessed her.

She dropped the tool that she was working with. “Oh,” she said. “That’s odd.”

It must be odd, Crawly thought, to suddenly have someone else in your head. “Hi,” he said, speaking with her mouth. “You’re a human, right?”

She brushed the dirt from her hands. “Yes, I suppose so,” she said. “What are you?”

Crawly decided he probably shouldn’t answer that. “Name’s Crawly.”

“And what do you want with me?” Her voice was steady enough, but Crawly sensed fear in her mind. He got the impression that, if pushed into a fight-or-flight response, this human would tend to choose the former. Her mind was already gearing up to resist if Crawly made her do anything too unpleasant.

“Just got a few questions,” said Crawly, trying to put her at ease. He didn’t really care to exert the kind of effort it would take to overcome her will. “I’m new to this plane. Don’t quite know my way around.”

“Oh.” She relaxed, gathered up her tools, and wiped her hands on her pants. “That sounds harmless enough. Let me just get inside,” she added, glancing around. “My neighbors think I’m odd enough as it is without them seeing me talking to myself.”

She went around the big nearby box and went in through one of the rectangles. “Strange as this is, it’s nice to have a visitor.” She turned a silver knob and water came running out. Holding her hands in the stream, she rubbed the dirt out of them. “I don’t get many. Not on good terms with most of my family, see. How can I help you?”

“Photograph,” said Crawly.

She paused. “I’m sorry?”

“What’s a photograph?” asked Crawly. “Why do they break so easily, and why would I be in one? And what were you doing outside there, with those green things? Why are there so many rectangles?”

The human dried her hands and filled a glass of water. “You’re very new, aren’t you?” she said. “It sounds like what you want is a dictionary.”

“What’s that?”

She pulled out a small, black rectangle from her pocket, and it lit up with a hundred colors. “Do you have one of these? This is a smartphone. It can tell you a lot.”

Crawly didn’t have a smartphone, but he wanted one. It was so shiny. He took control of the human’s hands for a moment so he could inspect it more closely. He couldn’t find any answers, though. Then the human’s mind started to get defensive, so he gave control back to her.

The screen changed, and she moved around with a few swipes of her finger. Now, that was something. He’d have expected to see that sort of thing in heaven, not on primitive Earth. “If you open a browser,” she said, demonstrating by tapping one of the little colored tiles, “you can search for whatever you want. There’s a lot of knowledge out there on the internet.”

Resisting the urge to ask what an inter net was, Crawly examined the tiny squiggles on the screen and tried to understand. “So what do I do now?”

“Well, you read.”

“How do I do that?”

“Oh.” The human paused. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed…” she cleared her throat and moved around the phone some more. “Not a problem. There’s a feature on these that will read the screen for you. My aunt had to use it when she lost her eyesight. You might be able to answer more questions on your own that way. Teaching a man to fish, you know.”

“What does that mean?” asked Crowley eagerly. “What’s fishing? Can you teach me that, too?”

She chuckled and sat down. “One thing at a time. I’ll show you the phone, and then you can ask me any other questions you have.”

 _“Any_ questions I have?” Crowley had too much experience with question-asking not to be suspicious of that. This was Her creation, after all, and he doubted this human would actually try to answer them all. “What if I ask the wrong ones?”

“There are no wrong questions,” she said, sounding affronted. “I’m an elementary school teacher. Answering strange questions is part of the job. If you never ask, you won’t learn anything.”

Well. That was different. Crawly liked Earth very much indeed.

When three hours had passed, Aziraphale couldn’t stand it anymore. He threw back the quilt and marched into the bedroom. Three hours was long enough for a decent nap. The worst that would happen if Aziraphale disturbed Crowley was that the demon would grumble at him, turn over, and fall right back asleep. Aziraphale drew himself up to his full, not-terribly-impressive height and opened the door.

There was Crowley, slumbering peacefully away. Aziraphale smiled, as he always did seeing Crowley asleep, and crept closer. “Hello, my dear,” he said quietly, brushing his fingers through the vibrant red hair. “Have you had a nice nap?”

Crowley must be sleeping very soundly. He didn’t react at all.

Aziraphale’s smile faded. He ran one thumb over Crowley’s cheek. “Crowley?”

No response. He wasn’t even breathing. Aziraphale sucked in his breath. “Oh, no no no…” He shook the demon’s shoulder and called his name with increasing volume, but the result was the same. He was like a ragdoll. A comatose body. An empty shell.

“No, my dear Crowley—” Aziraphale held the body against his chest, his eyes stung. How had this happened? How had everything gone downhill so fast? How could he have been such a fool as to let it happen?

He wiped his eyes. He should have been in here with Crowley. He should have kept watch over him. Crowley would have done that for him, and now…

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale sobbed into Crowley’s lifeless shoulder. “I’m s-so sorry, my dear. Come back. Please, come back.”

Crowley didn’t. His body was still warm, so it must be alive. But his soul could be anywhere. Hell, or heaven, or…nowhere…

“Come back,” said Aziraphale a little more firmly. “Or I’ll, I’ll…I’ll crash the Bentley. I mean it, Crowley. You know I can’t drive that machine by myself, but I shall have no choice if you don’t…If you don’t…”

He couldn’t finish the sentence. It didn’t matter. Crowley still didn’t answer.

“My dear, please,” Aziraphale pleaded. “What if I get locked up in prison again? Who would come to save me? In fact, I think that’s exactly what I’ll do. I’ll rob a bank, and you know the police would catch me straightaway.” He paused to take a breath and swallow his tears. “In fact, I’m already planning the heist. Let’s see, I think young Newton will be a great help in disabling the electronic security systems. Yes, that’s right, I’m getting our friends involved in my poor decisions as well. Perhaps Adam could be of assistance, if he has any residual antichrist powers. I hear Pepper’s been taking a jujutsu class, which could certainly come in handy. Oh, and Sergeant Shadwell, of course. It never hurts to have an angry Scotsman one can deploy at a moment’s notice. I’ll just point him at the security guards and tell him they each have a thousand nipples.”

He paused to see if any of this was having an effect on Crowley. It wasn’t.

“You…can’t hear me, can you?” Aziraphale’s voice shook. He laid the demon back down on the bed. “Where are you?” The tears started again, and this time Aziraphale had a more difficult time holding them back. He took the demon’s hand in both his own and sank to the floor. “Please,” he begged again, and then held Crowley’s hand against his forehead and cried.

Deborah (that was her name) was the most helpful human that Crowley had ever met, and never mind that it happened to be by default. She taught him how to use the screen reader on the smartphone, and the voice assistant, and then let him use her hands for a little while so he could try it out for himself. After that, true to her word, she actually tried to answer anything else Crowley wanted to know. That turned out to be a very large category.

He learned that what she was doing in the dirt outside was something called “gardening,” which involved things called “plants” that could suck up water and things out of the ground and use it to get taller all by themselves. She also helped him define several of the different rectangles he had encountered (“windows,” “doors,” and “houses,” which were composed of multiple “rooms”). Then, she walked around her own house to point out some of the different parts, and Crowley learned lots of fun words like “light fixture” and “kitchen” and “refrigerator.” The last occupied him for a while. “Refrigerator,” he said over and over, to make sure he would remember it. “Refrigerator. Re _frig_ erator.”

“We call them fridges most of the time,” Deborah told him.

Why the blazes would they want to do that, when they had a much better word for them already? “Fridge,” he tried. Nope, not as fun. “What’s it for?”

“It’s cold on the inside.” She opened it to show him. “We use it to store food, so it doesn’t rot as fast.”

Did everything on Earth have an expiration date? He already knew about the plants, and the flowers they made which didn’t last more than a few weeks. Crawly used her arm to shut the re _frig_ erator and looked around. “What are all these rectangles?” he asked, noticing a bunch of colorful ones pinned to the side of the refrigerator. “More photographs?”

“No, those are drawings,” said Deborah. “Some of the kids I teach made them for me.”

Crawly looked at them for a moment, trying to make sense of all the chaos and bright colors. “They’re not very good,” he pointed out.

“They’re _kids,_ ” she said defensively. “Do you know what kids are? Children? They’re little and they’re not good at things yet.”

 _Yet._ Crawly liked that. He liked the idea that someone could change and get better at things. Like the plants, sucking up water and growing and making flowers and fruits. Everything changed all the time up here, living and growing and dying and _learning._

“What are these meant to be?” he pointed at one of the drawings that had caught his eye. There were a lot of red circles on it, with green things on top. He thought he might have seen one or two in the refrigerator.

“Those are apples,” said Deborah. “It’s a fruit. Kids give them to teachers a lot. They’re supposed to symbolize knowledge.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, there’s an old biblical story…” Deborah waved a hand. “I won’t waste your time with it now. Look it up if you have time. Adam and Eve and the fruit of knowledge.”

If Earth was old enough to have old stories, it must have been around for longer than Crawly had thought. Maybe time passed differently on different planes? That would make sense. He had just crossed over and ended up a little later than he meant. Lord Beelzebub probably wouldn’t be happy about that, but in Crawly’s defense, it wasn’t his fault.

“These might interest you,” said Deborah, pulling two small disks off the side of the refrigerator. Crowley had taken them for pins, but they were smooth and flat on the other side. “They’re called magnets.”

The magnets interested Crawly so much that for nearly an hour he forgot to ask about anything else. He kept pulling them apart and letting them clack back together, or turning them around and watching them repel each other. Deborah couldn’t explain to him how they worked, and Crawly couldn’t work it out for himself, either. This would take more investigation. Maybe he’d ask a smartphone later.

“Well, this has been fun,” Deborah interrupted him, wresting back control of her hands with surprising willpower and replacing the magnets on the refrigerator. “But it’s dark outside, and getting near my bedtime. I’ll need to go to sleep soon.”

“It’s _what_ outside?” Crawly turned to a window in shock. What had happened to the lights? The—what had she called it—the sun? He couldn’t see the nice blue ceiling anymore. His first instinct was to panic. “What’s going on? Is this normal?”

“Yes, it’s normal,” said Deborah calmly. “It happens regularly. This is nighttime, and when the sun is up it’s daytime.”

Always something new on Earth. Did _nothing_ stay the same?

“Sleep,” he asked. “What’s that? How do you do it?”

She seemed puzzled at this question. “It’s not very interesting. Just something we need to do every now and again to rest and recharge. You just lie down and close your eyes, and then you become unconscious for a little bit. Sometimes you dream.”

“Being human sounds exhausting.”

“You’re not wrong about that. Anything else? I could do maybe one more question, but then I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

Crawly couldn’t help but be amused at the idea of a human politely asking a demon to leave, but then, she didn’t know he was a demon. He thought for a moment about his last question. He had learned so much today, and his vocabulary had at least tripled, and he knew how to ask a smartphone if he needed to know anything else. Although, there was one thing he was very curious about that the inter net might not be able to answer. “That angel who lives across the street.”

“Angel?” Deborah raised her eyebrows, bemused. “Well, you can’t mean Anthony. I hate to break it to you, but Mr. Fell’s happily married.”

“Misterfell” didn’t sound like an angelic name. Perhaps he was undercover as well. But then who was Anthony? Were there multiple humans living in there with the angel? “No, a different house. The ang—the guy with curly white hair, who wears little triangles?”

“Yes, that’s Mr. Fell. The triangles are a bowtie. What about him?”

What about him, indeed? Crawly couldn’t think of any specific questions besides “what’s his deal?” Maybe he should ask about Crowley instead. “Who’s Crowley?”

“Anthony Crowley is his husband,” said Deborah, putting particular emphasis on the last word. “I warn you, if you try to hurt them or come between them, the whole neighborhood will come down on your head.”

“What’s a husband?” Crawly asked. “I thought Crowley was human.”

“There is some speculation as to that,” she said with a chuckle. “As for the husband part…do you know what marriage is?”

“No.”

“What about love?”

“Oh.” Now he was starting to understand. “Yeah, I know that one. So it’s a love thing?”

“It’s a love thing,” she confirmed. “Though it’s more than that. It also takes a great deal of trust, and commitment. When people get married, they promise to spend the rest of their lives together.”

Crawly didn’t understand anymore. How were Crowley and “Misterfell” going to do that, when one of their lives was so much shorter than the other?

“That’s the idea, anyway,” she said. “It doesn’t always work out. But it has with Anthony and Fell.”

Well. For now. Crawly couldn’t help but think that the angel had terrible judgement. “And the ang—Misterfell, is he—alright? I mean, is his mind entirely…” He cleared his throat. “I had a weird encounter with him earlier. Seemed a little off. Missing a few marbles.” Missing all of his marbles, more like. His marbles had been thrown into the bottomless pit, never to be seen again. Not a single marble remained.

“Both of them are a little eccentric, I suppose.”

“A little eccentric” wasn’t how Crawly would describe someone who mistook a strange demon for his husband. Maybe he should ask around and see if anyone else thought Misterfell was off his rocker. “Right. Well, thanks for all your help, Deborah.”

She told him that there was no need for thanks, as this had been very entertaining for her, and wished him a good stay on Earth. Crawly left wondering if all humans were this pleasant. Hopefully, when Beelzebub instructed him to cause some trouble, they hadn’t been envisioning something that would hurt them. The more Deborah told him about humanity, the more he liked them.

He left through the walls. It really was dark now, but most of the houses had lights on inside, which was a convenient feature. Crawly stood in the middle of the street for a moment, marveling at how different it all looked in the dark. It was a pity about the ceiling, though. It had been so nice and blue—

“Oh,” he choked, looking up. “Stars.”

So that was what they looked like from Earth. There were so many of them, and they looked so faraway and tiny. If he really reached back in his memory, he could still remember what they had been like up close, massive balls of fire and light big enough to capture planets in their gravity, and now they looked so small…

He scanned the sky, trying to remember their names and see if he could find any of his own. There, that little blue-white one at the corner of the trapezoid, where he had messed up the tidy rectangle that one of the other starmakers (he couldn’t remember their names anymore) was trying to make. That one was his. They had kept it. He didn’t…he didn’t know how he felt about that. He swallowed, drew a deep breath, and lowered his eyes. It shouldn’t have mattered. He hadn’t been an angel in a long time.

Deborah had said that most humans were unconscious during nighttime, anyway, so they wouldn’t even be awake to look at them. That made this a good time to get his corporation back from the angel’s house. He floated over, found the window he had left through, passed through it, and then froze.

The angel was sitting on the floor next to the bed, holding the hand of Crawly’s corporation and sobbing uncontrollably. That was…not something Crawly had seen an angel do before. He didn’t like it. Maybe he should leave.

Before he could, the angel’s head snapped up. His eyes locked onto Crawly—apparently angels could see his soul floating around by itself, even if humans couldn’t—and about a dozen emotions flitted over his face. “Crowley!” He leapt to his feet, wiped his eyes hastily on his sleeve, and glared at Crawly. “Where the everlasting fuck have you been?”

Had he just—Were angels even allowed to curse? Considering everything Crawly knew about this one, did he even count as an angel?

The angel dropped the corporation’s hand and marched around the bed to stand in front of Crawly. “I have been worried sick,” he hissed. “I thought something terrible had happened! And now you come back like nothing’s wrong at all—Where did you go? Why—why do you look like that?”

Crawly looked down at himself. He looked exactly like he had always looked until earlier today, draped in a black sheet, long hair spilling down his shoulders. How could the angel possibly still think he was Crowley?

Where was Crowley, for that matter? It had been hours. Had he really not come back in all the time Crawly was away? Had he—Crawly had to shut his eyes to deal with the thought—had he come to Earth, married an angel, and then _run off and left?_

“You are going to get back into your corporation this instant,” said the furious angel, his face still red and puffy from crying. “And then you are going to explain to me _exactly_ what is going on here.”

Crawly opened his mouth to say something, anything at all, to clear this up. _Sorry, there’s been a mistake, I’m actually a demon, and I think your real husband may have left you, and have you had your head checked out lately?_ Yeah, that would go over well.

Who did Anthony Crowley think he was, anyway, to woo an angel and then just disappear? That was just asking to be smote, although Misterfell didn’t seem like the smiting kind of angel. Which meant that Crowley had taken advantage of that, and now he had left behind a brokenhearted angel and a mess that Crawly didn’t have much choice but to try to deal with.

He floated over, got back into his corporation, and sat up, fumbling around for his glasses with his eyes closed until he got them back on. “Um,” he said, sitting up. What was he supposed to do? Break the news to the angel and then waltz out of the house? He’d probably think Crawly had something to do with it, considering that he was a demon and all.

But the angel didn’t know Crawly was a demon. He didn’t even know yet that Crowley had disappeared. For that matter, he might not ever need to find out. If he didn’t recognize Crawly for an imposter, maybe he could track down Crowley, drag him back, and fix this before the angel even knew he was gone.

“Sssorry,” Crawly hissed, giving a sheepish grin. “Didn’t mean to wander off like that. I just, er…dreaming.” That was something Deborah had said happened during sleep, right? Was that even remotely relevant to the situation?

The angel at least did not get any angrier, which Crawly took as a good sign. “You’ve never astral projected in your sleep before.”

“Well, first time for everything,” said Crawly with a shrug. “I’ll try not to do it again.”

The angel relaxed a little. “You worried me an awful lot, my dear.” He sat down and laid his hand over Crawly’s. “I’m sorry I was so cross. I just couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.”

Oh, no. Not this again. Crawly hadn’t thought this plan all the way through. He carefully pulled his hand out from under Misterfell’s. “Um…angel,” he said, remembering the angel’s lack of reaction when he had called him that earlier. “Could you maybe not, er, touch me so much? For a bit?”

The angel stared at him with wide eyes. He looked like he didn’t know exactly how to react, but knew that he wasn’t happy about it. “If you want, my dear, but why?”

Crawly’s heart raced. It wasn’t that the physical contact was unpleasant. It was actually surprisingly nice, which was exactly the problem. It was nice, and he was a demon. Demons didn’t have nice things. Demons didn’t enjoy nice things. It was nice, and soon he was going to have to return to hell where nothing would ever be nice again.

“Er…Still not feeling great,” he said. “Skin’s…uncomfortable. Itchy.”

“Oh.” The angel went back to looking concerned, which was at least easier to deal with. “Do you have a rash?”

“Yep,” said Crawly, deciding that whatever a rash was, it was definitely something that he had.

“From what? You were…you were in your garden yesterday. Is there poison ivy?”

They had a garden? Crawly’s interest was piqued. He opened his mouth to agree that yes, “poison ivy” had definitely given him this “rash,” when he thought to wonder why, if poison ivy caused humans pain, they would plant it. “You think I’d grow poison ivy in my own garden?”

The angel rolled his eyes in a surprisingly unangelic gesture. “I didn’t say you put it there, dear. You know how fast it can spread. Remember what happened three summers ago?”

Plants could spread? They could just grow places without permission? “Think I can be trusted to keep it out of my garden,” said Crawly. “Especially after that summer. Don’t want a repeat of that.”

The angel seemed to be buying it. This was easier than Crawly had expected. “Would you like some cream to help with that rash?”

Crawly wasn’t sure what cream was, or if he wanted any. “Nah,” he said, deciding not to risk it. “I’ll just let it run its course. It’ll clear up soon.” It couldn’t take long to track down one human, right?

The angel’s expression suggested that he expected Crawly to change his mind before long, but he didn’t comment. “Oh,” he said, seeming to remember something. “You left your phone in the—”

“Hey!” Crawly snatched up the little black rectangle, grinning. Crowley had one of these? That was perfect. Now Crawly wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of finding one for his own, and he could ask it as many questions as he wanted.

The angel looked a little surprised at his reaction when he looked up. “Uh…Thought I’d lost it, that’s all,” Crawly explained, calming down and setting it on the table next to the bed. He changed the subject. “Think I might get a bit more sleep. Might help a little.”

The angel blinked at him, confused. “With the rash?”

Was that not how rashes worked? “Uh, no,” Crawly decided. “The…fuzzy head. Remember?”

“It’s still bothering you?” the angel fretted. “Yes, I think you had definitely better get some rest, in that case. Do _not_ go wandering off this time.”

“I’ll do my best.” Crawly wriggled under the warm blankets again. The humans had certainly gotten comfort figured out.

“Goodnight, then,” said Aziraphale. “Rest well, my dear. I hope you feel better in the morning.”

Crawly thought about answering, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. Then, a few moments later, he wasn’t thinking at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let the fake dating (but not really) shenanigans begin!


	3. And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile

Crawly was falling.

There was fire below him and darkness all around him, and he burned like a meteor as he plummeted away from all the parts of Creation that She cared about. It was black, and it was empty, and everything hurt. He screamed, and in between screams he couldn’t help but think _haven’t I don’t this before?_ But the thought slipped away from him as some new part of him started burning, just when he’d thought the fire had already worked its way all the way through to his core. He couldn’t see, and he didn’t know if it was because of the all-encompassing darkness or the stabbing pain in his eyes—

And then the pain stopped, and the falling stopped, and he was floating gently in the air. It was still dark, but lights dotted the blackness, and when he looked down there was more light in his hands. He smiled, and let it swirl around his fingers, and then shaped and kneaded it into a star. “Where d’you want to go?” he asked it, looking around for a free spot. “Nice empty quarter up there, lots of space. What d’you think?” He looked down at the star and thought for a moment. “Nah, you’d get lonely up there all by yourself. How about I make you a friend?”

He took another handful of starlight, shaped it again, and put the two stars side-by-side in the bit of space he had picked out. They would drift apart eventually, but at least for now—

Wait, something was happening. He went in for a closer look. The two stars were dancing around each other, held in place by each other’s gravitational pull. He gave a delighted shout, then turned and called to the other starmakers, “Guys, you’ve got to come see this!”

The scene faded away into blissful comfort. Crawly couldn’t remember ever feeling as warm and safe as he did now. He stirred a little, stretching out his limbs. Something brushed lightly across his scalp. He wriggled closer to it.

“Good morning, dearest,” said a voice. “Are you awake?”

Crawly panicked, spasmed, and fell off the bed. Fuckity fuck—He was a _demon._ Had he forgotten that? He hadn’t made stars in eons, and he didn’t melt into comfortable beds, and he certainly didn’t enjoy it when an angel gently brushed through his now-tragically-short hair because he thought Crawly was someone else. “Fuck,” he said, out loud this time by accident. “Ow.”

“Oh dear—Are you alright, Crowley?”

“Nhyep,” he said, rubbing his eyes. The sleep had done something funny to them. Glasses, he needed the glasses—He felt around on the table beside the bed until he found them. He put them on, got to his feet, and pretended like he hadn’t just thrown himself onto the floor in an undignified tangle of limbs. “Hello.”

“Did you sleep well?” the angel asked. “Apart from the nightmare.”

“Yep.” It was, after all, the best sleep he’d ever had, if only because he had nothing to compare it to. “I mean, obviously, apart from the night mare.”

“I’m sorry about that. What was it this time?” The angel’s forehead got that too-frequent wrinkle of concern. “It sounded like the Fall.”

Crawly flinched. The angel didn’t know about that, he couldn’t possibly know—If he realized Crawly was a demon, he would never be treating him like this—

Then he remembered that there were other, more mundane types of falling, and relaxed. “Yeah, that’s what it was. Plus, y’know, the other fall, just now.”

The angel chuckled and broke into a smile. Crawly blinked. He hadn’t seen him do that before. “Well,” said the angel, folding the rectangle he had open on his lap (a book?) and setting it aside. “Since you’re awake, shall we go to brunch like we planned? We’ll be a bit late for our reservation, I’m afraid. I didn’t want to wake you when you needed rest so badly yesterday.”

“Sure.” Crawly had no idea what brunch was, but if it was anything like plants or magnets, it had to be good. “Let’s go, then.”

The angel looked pointedly down at Crawly’s clothes. “Well, you’re still in your pajamas, dear. And your hair, I’m sorry to say, is in quite a state.”

Crawly looked down. He didn’t remember changing clothes, but what he had on now was much more comfortable than what he’d woken up in yesterday. Still, he supposed he needed to keep up appearances while on Earth. “Fine, I’ll get ready,” he said. The angel was also wearing much more comfortable-looking attire, and the triangles—the bowtie—was gone. “You gonna do the same?”

“I should hope so.” The angel got up and opened a door, and there was a whole little room full of clothes squirreled away back there. The vast majority of them were black. The angel selected one of three not-black outfits and turned around to lay the articles out on the bed.

Crawly hurried over while the angel’s back was turned and rifled through the black clothes. At least Crowley had a similar taste in colors (or lack thereof) as he did. Unfortunately, many of his clothes looked nearly as uncomfortable as the first outfit. Those pants had been so tight that he refused to put on another pair. Surely there must be another option.

There was. Crawly stopped in his frantic rifling, looked at the thing for a moment, and then pulled it out. It was perfect. A little more form-fitting than the sheet he was used to, but open at the bottom and long enough to cover everything. It had no sleeves to restrict his arms, just straps to hold it up. When he looked closer, little black beads sparkled at him.

“That’s a little fancy for brunch, isn’t it?” said the angel, buttoning up his shirt.

“Never too fancy for brunch,” Crawly said, wondering if he could get away with only wearing this for the rest of his time on Earth. He took it off the hanger, fought with the pajamas until he managed to get them off, and then pulled the dress over his head.

He got stuck almost immediately. Dammit, he needed to get better at this.

“You forgot the zipper again,” said the angel.

Zipper? Now he was just making up words. Why would anything be called— _Zzzzzip._ Oh. That was why.

The angel helped him pull the dress down, and then something went _zzzzzip_ again. “That dress always looks lovely on you, my dear,” said the angel, smiling at him for the second time.

_I’ve never worn this dress or any other before in my life, but thanks._ Crawly caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror on the wall and did a double take. He _did_ look good. Maybe the humans were onto something.

“Oh, look.” The angel lifted Crawly’s arm. “Your rash seems to have cleared up.”

Shoot. He hadn’t realized that rashes had a visual indicator. “Er…still itchy,” he said, pulling his arm back. “Might not have been a rash.”

The angel’s smile faded and that concerned look took its place again. “What, then?”

“Nothing serious.” Crawly couldn’t think of much more to say than that.

“Hm.” The angel looked at him curiously. “Do…do you molt?”

Crawly had molted once as a snake, and it had been very uncomfortable. He hadn’t realized that humans went through the same process. It did give him a convenient excuse, though. “Yeah,” he said, snapping his fingers. “That’s probably it. It is ‘bout time for my next molt, now I think about it.”

The angel relaxed. “That explains it. I’m sorry you’re uncomfortable, dear. I’ll try not to touch you until it’s over.”

Good. Perfect excuse. Crawly looked into the mirror and tried to get his hair out of whatever “state” the angel thought it was in. He managed to make it less squashed on one side, at least. “Alright,” he said. “Brunch? Lead the way.”

The angel was ready now, bowtie and all. “Yes, indeed,” he said, smiling at Crawly as he opened the door.

Crawly really needed to get used to all these smiles. Well, actually, he needed to _not_ get used to them, if he was going back to hell after this. But he didn’t know what else he was supposed to do. He didn’t like the wrinkle of concern, and he definitely didn’t like the crying or the anger, so he wasn’t sure what was left.

“Crowley.”

He stopped. Had he missed something else?

The angel pointed at a rack beside the door. “Shoes?”

“Uh, right.” Crawly squatted down to figure out what he was supposed to do with the shoes. They were shaped sort of like feet. That was probably what they were for.

Well, most of them were shaped like feet. Some of them were pointy on the end, and one pair stood on a very thin stick. Was that even a shoe? He sat down and tried to put a foot in.

There was something weird about his feet. He twisted his leg to try to get a better look. The soles of them were rough with scarring. It didn’t hurt, but what might have happened? He hadn’t hurt them recently, and he definitely hadn’t had the scars before.

It probably wasn’t important. Trying to pretend he hadn’t noticed anything odd, he put on the thing that was barely shaped like a foot. Well, it fit, anyway. Not comfortably, but that checked out with Crowley’s other clothing choices. He put the other one on, tried to stand up, and couldn’t figure out how.

The angel offered him both his hands. Crawly hesitated a moment before he accepted them and let the angel pull him to his feet. “Whoa—” he wobbled a little. Was this really what these shoes were for? What the heaven was Crowley thinking, trying to stand in these? Well, Crawly was committed now. Brunch couldn’t be all standing, could it?

“Do you need help, Crowley?” asked the angel, watching him with his eyebrows slightly raised.

“No, I don’t—blasted—” He nearly fell over, and his arms pinwheeled.

The angel caught him. “I know how stubborn you are about fashion, but would you like to change your shoes? I don’t want you breaking your ankle on the walk up the drive.”

Ankles could break? Crawly started to panic. If Crowley was stubborn about fashion, that meant he had to be, too, but he could barely stand in these by himself. “Er.” This angel wasn’t so bad, and he didn’t know Crawly was a demon. He swallowed his pride. “Maybe could use just a little help.”

The angel stepped beside Crawly so he could support himself on the angel’s shoulder. One arm wrapped around Crawly’s waist, then tensed. “Is this alright? I know you asked me not to touch you—”

“Yeah, well, we all talk big when we can bloody stand, don’t we?” Crawly clung to him like a lifeline. “Drop me, and I’ll kill you,” he hissed through his teeth, and realized too late that death threats, even empty ones, might not be commonplace between married couples.

The angel just sighed and shook his head. He supported Crawly all the way to the front door, and then they walked outside and approached something big and black and shiny. The angel opened a door in it. There was a chair inside, so Crawly sat down. The angel shut the door and climbed into the other side. They both sat there for a moment.

The angel cleared his throat. “Are you planning to start the car sometime soon?”

“Uh—yes.” Crawly looked around the “car” for something that looked like a start button. There wasn’t one. He checked that the angel wasn’t watching him too closely, and then sent a quick miracle into the car, tying it as closely as he could with the word “start.”

The whole thing around them started rumbling. Someone shouted through a little box in front of them, “ _FAT BOTTOMED GIRLS, YOU MAKE THE ROCKIN’ WORLD GO ROUND!”_

Crawly jumped and sat up tense as a rod. “What the heaven—”

The angel turned a dial next to the box, and the shouting got a little quieter. “Something a little more soothing, perhaps?” he said to the box.

“ _I GOT MORGAGES ON HOMES, I GOT—Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?”_

What was this? Crawly squinted at the little box. The car had an amazing voice. He was a big fan of brunch so far.

The angel was watching him when he looked up. That worried crease was back. “Are you feeling well enough to drive, dear?”

“Uh.” So this wasn’t all that brunch consisted of. That was a pity.

“Well, how were you expecting to get us to brunch? Would you like me to drive us?”

“I mean, if you’re offering…”

The angel sighed impatiently, shook his head, and got out of the car. “Let’s eat breakfast at home today, then. Crowley, you told me you were feeling better,” he said, with a note of accusation in his voice.

“I am.” Crawly tried all the switches and levers on the door before he found one that opened it. “Not quite a hundred percent, I guess.”

“Hm.” Misterfell sighed, offering Crawly his hand to help him climb out of the car, and supported him back to the front door again. “Does it have to do with the molt?”

“Maybe.” Molting really only had to do with skin, but the angel didn’t seem to know that. Maybe he could just blame everything on that. _Oh, the slitted yellow eyes that are a mockery of God’s creation? Yeah, I’m just molting. They’ll fall out in no time._

Once they were inside, Crawly half-sat, half-fell onto the floor, ripped off the shoes, and threw them across the room. Never again.

“There’s no need to be so dramatic.” The angel snapped his fingers and the shoes placed themselves neatly into the shoe rack. “You just sit on the sofa, dear. What would you like for breakfast? Besides coffee, I mean.”

“Breakfast” was as much a mystery as “brunch.” Crawly shrugged. “Dunno. You pick.”

That seemed to be the right answer. A corner of the angel’s mouth turned up. “I don’t have your gift for cooking, I’m afraid, but I could try…well, why don’t I surprise you.”

Crawly was going to have to learn to cook, too? He was going to have to learn to cook better than an angel? “Sssure,” he said, with an accidental hiss.

Misterfell disappeared into the kitchen, and Crawly exhaled in relief. Finally, he had a few seconds to himself. He snapped his fingers to summon the smartphone from his bedroom. Now he just had to figure out how to unlock it without Crowley’s fingerprints, or his face, or knowledge of any passcode he might use…

The phone unlocked as soon as he looked at it. Huh. He must look enough like Crowley to fool the phone. He glanced toward the kitchen. The angel might not be quite as cracked as he’d thought.

Checking that the volume was turned almost all the way down, Crawly pressed the button on the side for the voice assistant. “Where is Anthony Crowley?” he whispered.

“I’m sorry,” said the phone. “I didn’t quite get that.”

“Anthony Crowley,” he hissed, holding the phone up to his mouth.

“I didn’t find a contact for: Anthony Chloe.”

“I said _Crowley_.”

“Here’s what I found on the internet for: I said cruelly.”

“You’re doing this on purpose.”

“Here’s what I found on the internet for: You’re doing this on purpose.”

Scowling, Crawly tossed the phone onto the sofa next to him. Deborah had led him to believe that the phone would be a lot more helpful. It had certainly had enough to say about gardening, when she had showed it to him. He was going to have to find Anthony Crowley some other way.

Aziraphale whisked the eggs with a lot more vigor than was necessary. Crowley seemed a little more like his usual self this morning, at least, but he still wasn’t quite right. He rarely had that much difficulty in heels, and it was very concerning that he couldn’t seem to dress himself properly. Not to mention his little disappearing act the previous day, which Aziraphale was still a little cross about.

It must be the molt. He had never known Crowley to molt before, but then, they had been living together for less than a decade, and he hadn’t known every detail of Crowley’s life before that. It was good to know that this was a regular occurrence, but Aziraphale still didn’t like to see Crowley like this, distant, tense, and on edge. He hoped that the molt would be over soon. He was going to miss holding Crowley’s hand.

The eggs were a lot frothier than they were meant to be, so Aziraphale put them down. He wasn’t trying to make a meringue here. He poured in a bit of flour, and some milk, and kept beating. In a frying pan on the stove, the butter was already sizzling. He could never get the timing quite right when he cooked. He turned down the heat and added salt and butter to the batter.

“What’s going on in here?”

Aziraphale jumped and turned to see Crowley standing in the doorway. “Oh,” he said with a smile. “You startled me. I thought you wanted to be surprised.”

“I can act surprised,” said Crowley. He sniffed the air. “What’s that?”

Aziraphale gave a little chuckle. “It’s only butter so far.”

Crowley walked over to look at the sizzling pan. Now he’d probably give Aziraphale some lesson about how he wasn’t doing it quite right, he needed a lower heat or it was going to burn, and actually he really ought to be using the cast-iron skillet—

“Huh.” Crowley didn’t comment on the butter. He pointed to the bowl Aziraphale was holding. “What’ve you got there?”

Aziraphale smirked. He had hoped to deliver the joke once everything was finished cooking, but Crowley was already here… “Crepes.”

“Ah.” Crowley nodded. “Nice.”

Aziraphale’s smile faded. Had Crowley chosen today, of all days, to stop giving him a hard time about the Bastille? “They’re—they won’t be very good, I’m afraid,” he said, pushing for a reaction. “Hardly worth dying for.”

Crowley tilted his head a little like he was trying to parse this out. “Where are the crepes that are worth dying for, then?”

“Paris, of course,” Aziraphale said, turning towards him. “Crowley—”

The smell of carbon distracted him. The butter had started to burn. “Oh—Fiddlesticks.” He turned down the heat and dropped in a spoonful of batter, smoothing it out with the back of the spoon. It came out a little lumpy, and not completely round. Crowley would have done it better. Aziraphale turned around to ask him if he wanted to help.

Crowley was looking through the pantry for some reason. Sensing Aziraphale looking at him, he turned around. “What’s up?”

Aziraphale shut his mouth and shook his head, turning back to the crepe. He loosened it with a spatula, ripping off half of it in the process. It didn’t seem that Crowley would be of much help right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow it sure is convenient that Crowley also wears all black, and is the same size as Crawly, and looks similar enough to him that both of their faces can unlock the same phone.


	4. And you may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I see from the number of comments on the last chapter that we're all responsibly isolating ourselves. Good job, guys! Stay safe out there! Or in there, actually. Please stay inside.
> 
> This is shaping up to be considerably longer than I expected, so buckle up I guess.

Crawly had been interested to try eating, but breakfast was a little underwhelming. Misterfell enjoyed the food a lot more than he did, so he tried to fake enthusiasm. “These are good,” he said, pointing his “fork” at the torn-up “crepe” on his plate.

The angel cast him a knowing look. “You don’t need to flatter me, Crowley. I know my cooking ability.”

He had seemed down ever since Crawly had interrupted him in the kitchen, and Crawly couldn’t work out why. There was some significance to the crepes that he was missing, but he couldn’t exactly ask the phone what shared experience the angel might be alluding to.

“Crowley, are you certain you’re alright?”

“Hm? Yeah.” Crawly’s pulse increased. Had he figured it out? “Just a bit out of sorts today.”

“Is…” the angel trailed off and laid his fork down on the table. His hands fidgeted. “I’m sorry, but you’ve been so distant, I have to ask. Is it me?”

Crawly paused. Blinked. “What?”

“Am I the problem?” the angel still didn’t look up at him. His voice shook. “Have I done something to…to upset you? Or…”

He sounded like he might start crying again. Dammit, Crawly was only here because he _didn’t_ want to break up the happy couple. “Course it isn’t you,” he said. “You’re an angel, why would you ever be a problem?”

“Well.” The angel gave a breathy laugh. “Heaven thought I was quite a big problem, if you will recall.”

What? But— _what?_ Crawly blinked hard. Misterfell wasn’t Fallen. He was sure of that. What could he have done that wouldn’t merit Falling, but would get him labeled as “quite a big problem”?

Oh. Well. The whole, running-off-to-Earth-to-live-with-a-human thing seemed fairly significant. Crawly shrugged. “Guess you’re my problem now.”

“Hm, yes,” said the angel. “Pity, that. Whatever are you going to do with me?”

Crawly glanced up. Was…was the angel trying to flirt with him? That wasn’t surprising, considering that he thought Crawly was his husband, but he hadn’t exactly been mentally prepared for this. I mean, yes, Crawly was only doing this to keep the angel from finding out his husband was missing, and yes, encouraging a rogue angel to stay with his human partner did fit within the definition of “causing trouble,” at least trouble for heaven, so it was all very demonic. Very evil. The ends justified the means. So Crawly had better go and flirt back.

“Keep you here, I hope,” he managed to get out. Was that the best he could do? It hardly even qualified.

The angel seemed satisfied, at least. He gave Crawly a much sappier smile than such a sorry attempt warranted. “I hope so too, my dear,” he said. “I love you.”

“Ngk.” Crawly picked up his now-empty plate and utensils. Nope, he wasn’t going to do this right now. Nope, nope, nope. “Got some stuff I need to take care of. Be back in…later.”

The angel blinked, his smile gone. “What sort of stuff?”

Crawly paused halfway to the kitchen. What kinds of things did humans do in the middle of the day without their husbands? Sleeping was for nighttime, and eating apparently happened together. He didn’t know what else Crowley might get up to. “It’ll be a surprise,” he said, forcing a grin.

“Oh.” The angel looked intrigued, and no longer quite so disappointed. “Well, I look forward to it.”

Crawly left the dishes in the kitchen because he didn’t know what else to do with them, went to the door, and put on some shoes that were much more comfortable than the ones he had tried before. “Later, angel.” He stepped outside and shut the door. Now he’d have to prepare a surprise. He could figure that out later.

He went for the car first, climbed inside, and started it, bracing himself for the loud music. “ _Pressure! Pushing down on me, pressing down on you, no man ask for…”_

“Shh, for just a second,” said Crawly. “Look, could you—”

“… _Under pressure! That brings a building down, splits a family in two…”_

“I didn’t have anything to do with that,” said Crawly. “Crowley was already gone when I—Can you even understand me?”

“ _Mm ba da day, mm ba da day, di day dah, di day dah, that’s okay!”_

Well, either the car was having a stroke, or it had been a fluke when it seemed to respond to the angel’s request earlier. Crawly tried one more time. “I’m trying to find Anthony Crowley,” he said. “Do you know where he might have gone?”

“ _It’s the terror of knowing what this world is—”_ The music changed abruptly. _“—This is your life, don’t play hard to get…”_

Crawly genuinely couldn’t tell if the car was trying to communicate with him. “Yeah, it’s not, though,” he said. “That’s the thing.”

_“…It’s a free world, all you have to do is fall in love…”_

“Really on a roll with the terrible advice,” Crawly muttered. “Look, do you have any idea at all where Crowley is?”

The music changed again. _“Here I stand, here I stand, look around, around, around, around, around…”_

Crawly looked around. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. There weren’t even any humans nearby. “So I guess you can’t help me find him.”

_“—Take a loooook in the mirror and cry, Lord, what you’re doing to me…”_

Crawly sighed and laid his head against the round thing in front of him. Talking to machines wasn’t doing him any good. He was going to have to ask some of the other humans, which meant starting rumors of Crowley’s disappearance. And possibly, as Deborah put it, “bringing the whole neighborhood down on his head.”

The car kept singing. “ _I have spent all my years in believing in you, but I just can’t get no relief, Lord, somebody, oooh somebody…”_

“Can you sing this one from the beginning?” Crawly interrupted. He’d been thoroughly impressed by the car’s musical taste so far, and this particular song was…good. It was good. It definitely didn’t make him feel things.

The car obliged him. “ _Can…anybodyyyy…find meeeee…somebody toooo…loooooove?”_

It really was quite impressive. The car could sing with multiple voices, and make other sounds in the background. It was like there was a whole choir stuffed into that tiny box. Crawly listened to the song all the way through, and only teared up a little bit. “That’s really good,” he told the car at the end of it. “How d’you do that?”

_“All we hear is, radio ga ga, radio goo goo, radio ga ga…”_

More nonsense. The car was even madder than the angel, even if it did have a brilliant musical talent. “Well, sorry about Crowley,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll try to find him.”

_“Radio what’s new, radio, someone still loves you…”_

Crawly turned off the car with another miracle and got out. He’d made another friend, at least, if the car was sane enough to count. He supposed it was time to try making a few more.

He went to Deborah first, though, to put off meeting strangers for a bit. “Hi,” he said when she opened the door. “It’s—”

“Anthony?” she asked. “What brings you here this morning?”

“Wh—No, it’s Crawly. I possessed you the other day.”

She looked suddenly furious. Glancing around and lowering her voice, she asked, “And now you’ve possessed Anthony?”

“Um.” He wondered for a moment if he might have done that without realizing it. But, no, he still looked like himself, apart from the hair. “No, I—”

“Let him go _right now,_ ” she hissed. “I told you to stay away from them.”

“Nn, no, we just happen to look the same. Listen—”

She stepped towards him. “Mr. Fell helped me through a really rough time. I owe him a lot. If you hurt either of them in any way—”

“I’m not—” This was clearly not working. He should just end this conversation now. Crawly froze, then blinked around for a second like he didn’t know where he was. “Oh. How did I get here?”

She bought it. “Anthony, is that you?”

“Yep, that’s my name,” said Crawly, nodding. “Huh. Weird. I guess I’ll go home now.” He turned around and left. Well, he’d made one friend, and lost one, so net zero.

He walked along the street, puzzled. One person mistaking him for Crowley could easily be a fluke. Two was a pattern. And so far it had been three, if he counted the smartphone. He and Crawly must look identical. Which was weird. Surely the Almighty wouldn’t model one of her humans after one of the Fallen.

Unless…

Crawly stopped and looked around. This might not be his world at all. Maybe, in trying to cross over to Earth, he had accidentally stumbled into a parallel universe, where he had been born a human. It would explain the identical appearances, and the similarity between their names, and the fact that the angel still hadn’t noticed the difference.

He kicked a rock and watched it skitter down the road. Parallel-universe-Crawly was a real piece of work, he could say that much. Bastard had managed to trick an angel into marrying him, and then run off and left. Hadn’t even left a note. He ought to be the demon, not Crawly.

Except—The stars. Crawly had recognized his stars. Why would they still be here, if Crawly had never been an angel in this world?

These weren’t exactly questions he could go door-to-door asking the neighbors, and they’d probably think Anthony Crowley had lost it if they thought he was going around asking about his own whereabouts. He supposed he was on his own for now.

Well, mostly. He got back in the car and turned it on. “Yeah, I’m back already,” he said when it started shouting about something called a bicycle. “Could you sing some more of that stuff from earlier? That was really good.”

The bicycle song changed to something else. _“Ooh, you make me live!”_

Crawly leaned forward against the round thing again. This wasn’t helping him answer any of his questions, but it did make him feel a little better. Plus, he was learning more about Earth’s music. Maybe he could bring some of this back to Hastur and Beelzebub. It wasn’t really relevant to his work, but it might improve morale around the office.

_“Oh, you’re the best friend that I ever had.”_

“Thanks,” Crawly muttered, though he didn’t know if the car was trying to talk to him. “You too, if only by default.”

He glanced up at the angel’s house. That didn’t count. The angel thought he was someone else.

It wouldn’t last much longer, he hoped. Crowley had a lot to answer for, not least of which was putting Crawly through all of this. He didn’t need any of this, the comfort of the soft bed that he didn’t deserve, the affection which was meant for someone else, the constant reminders of what he could never have. And that bastard, Crowley, had just thrown it all away. Someone needed to bring him in, rough him up a little, make sure he understood what he had, _and if you ever hurt that angel again—_

All this protectiveness was coming from a place of evil, of course. That’s what Crawly was. That’s all he was. That’s all he was ever going to be.

Aziraphale spent the rest of the morning reading and trying not to think too much about the crepes (Why didn’t Crowley remember the crepes? Or was he just pretending to get a rise out of Aziraphale?), or about the glasses (how long had it been since Aziraphale had seen his eyes?), or about the way he’d reacted when Aziraphale told him he loved him. Just when he’d thought Crowley was acting more like himself, he gave Aziraphale more reason to worry. Something was wrong. He didn’t know what, but something was very wrong. Crowley wasn’t himself at—

A horrible thought occurred to Aziraphale, and he tensed, looking over the top of his book. If Crowley wasn’t remembering things, if he didn’t react to things the way he usually did, if he wasn’t behaving like his usual self…

No, that was absurd. Aziraphale shook off the thought and relaxed. If another demon had possessed Crowley’s corporation, Aziraphale would know it at once. Crowley’s mannerisms hadn’t changed, and nobody could ever imitate them that well, except perhaps Aziraphale himself.

He was probably overreacting, as he had a tendency to do. It was most likely just the molt, as Crowley had said. Growing a second layer of skin and then having the first one peel off sounded frightfully uncomfortable. It was a wonder Crowley could focus on anything at all. But…he could have at least said that he loved Aziraphale back.

He glanced at the clock. It was well into afternoon, and he hadn’t seen Crowley since breakfast. Where could he be for so long? Aziraphale shouldn’t be nosy—Crowley had insisted that it was a surprise, after all—but it couldn’t hurt to at least see if the Bentley was still outside. That would give him an estimate of how far Crowley had traveled.

He set down his book, went to the front window, and pushed the curtain aside. Not only was the Bentley still there, but Crowley was still inside it, sitting with his head against the steering wheel. So he was just spending some quality time with the Bentley. That was like Crowley. Aziraphale let the curtain fall and turned to go back to his book.

And turned the rest of the way around and opened the door. He ought to check on him, at least. Aziraphale didn’t like the look of how he was slumped against the wheel.

He shuffled down the walk and tapped on the window. The demon’s head jolted up. He scrambled for his glasses, making sure they were still on his face and all the way up against his eyes. Aziraphale gave what he hoped was a calming smile and gestured for Crowley to roll down the window. The demon just looked at him blankly.

“Could you help us out a little?” Aziraphale asked the car politely, and the window slid down. The piano section of “Bohemian rhapsody” drifted through the window. “My dear,” said Aziraphale, “if you wanted some time alone, you could have just told me.”

Crowley looked at him blankly for a second. He pointed at the radio. “Have you _heard_ this song?”

“You only forced me to listen to it a few dozen times.” Aziraphale didn’t appreciate him changing the subject. “You can talk to me, Crowley. There’s something bothering you. You ought to know by now that you can’t hide it from me.”

His expression was difficult to read. Aziraphale wished he would take off his sunglasses.

“We don’t have to talk about it now,” he said reluctantly. “I wish you would, but I won’t push you. When you’re ready…”

“It’s not you,” he interrupted. “Nothing to do with you. Nothing you need to worry about.”

Aziraphale’s gaze dropped. He had thought they were past all this, all the secrets and omissions in some misguided attempt to keep each other safe. “Well, but I do rather need to worry about you, Crowley.”

Crowley didn’t say anything. He had been taking longer than usual to form his replies recently. Aziraphale wondered what he was thinking behind those shades.

“I know what will cheer you up,” Aziraphale said, brightening a little. “Come back inside. I don’t think it’s too early for a little wine, do you?”

“Uh…no.” That seemed to have caught Crowley’s interest. “Not too early at all.”

Aziraphale smiled and opened the door for him. Alcohol almost always made Crowley feel better. And if it happened to loosen his tongue, and he let slip what was bothering him, well, that was just an added bonus.

“Wine,” Crawly said, swirling the odd-shaped glass and watching the liquid inside catch the light. “S’a funny word, isn’t it?”

“I suppose,” said the angel.

Crawly downed another sizeable gulp. It was a little bitter, and clung to his throat in a weird way, but he liked the taste it left behind. He hadn’t quite figured out what he thought about it. He’d better keep drinking to gather more information. (He’d been telling himself that for the past bottle and a half)

“Slow down, Crowley.” The angel laughed, but that worried crease was back in his forehead. “When I said it wasn’t too early, I didn’t realize you were planning to get sloshed at four in the afternoon.”

“ _Sloshed._ ” Earth had so many fun words. Crawly giggled and drank some more. His head felt a little weird. Maybe all the insanity of the past few days had finally made him snap. Well, fine with him. He was having a great time.

“Did you have a good afternoon, my dear?” the angel asked, refilling his own glass, but neglecting to fill Crawly’s. Crawly held up his glass with a disappointed look. The angel shot him a look of silent warning.

“Pretty good afternoon,” Crawly lied, lowering the glass with a sigh. “Nice chat with the car.”

“I’m sure she appreciated that,” said the angel. “And before that?”

Crawly was confused. He hadn’t done anything before that except eat crepes and try to pretend to flirt with an angel. Unless the angel meant yesterday?

He’d had so much fun yesterday. He scrambled to a more upright position to tell the angel all about it. “You know what I saw?” he asked, gesturing so widely that he would have spilled his wine if he hadn’t already drunk it all up. “Magnets. Have you seen those before?”

“Yes, I’ve seen magnets before.” The angel looked amused, but delightfully so. “But do go on.”

“They—Well, they—they _stick._ Just—” He brought his hands together to indicate two magnets latching onto each other. “Click! Just like that. Amazing. And plants—you know about plants?”

“Well, not quite as much as you do, but yes.”

“They just grow right up. Right up, out of the ground.” He pointed up, and the movement unbalanced him so that he slumped back against the sofa. “Fantastic.”

The angel was chuckling to himself on the other end of the sofa. “After all this time, my dear, you still get so excited about the little things.”

“Little—” Crawly sputtered. “Have you _seen_ magnets?”

“I wasn’t criticizing,” said the angel. “It’s lovely to witness. And what else?”

“ _Schools,_ ” said Crawly. “These humans, bloody brilliant—Came up with a whole building just for learning things. A whole system for it. These kids, they start out not knowing anything, and then one day, _bam_ , they’re—taller, and, wait…No, teaching other kids, that was it. Just…” he made a circular motion with one hand while he tried to think of the word he was looking for. “Just goes round and round.”

“I expect you’re still very pleased with that,” said the angel, smiling. “The cycle of knowledge—”

“Cycle,” Crawly echoed, pointing at him. That was the word he was thinking of. He snapped his fingers, thinking of another word. “Bicycle!”

The angel looked at him blankly for a moment, and then burst out laughing. Crawly did too, until he tipped sideways over the arm of the sofa and let his head dangle over the edge while he shook with laughter. The glasses fell off. “Oop—” He twisted around, stretched over the arm of the sofa, and snatched them up. He put them back on, but since he was upside-down, they immediately fell off again, and he had to start the whole process over.

“Bicycle, Crowley?” the angel gasped, doubled over and clutching his stomach.

“Tricycle.” Crawly decided to just hold the glasses onto his face. “Fricycle. Wait, no—”

The angel laughed even harder. “ _Fricycle?_ ”

When the laughter finally died out, Crawly’s sides hurt. He couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed like that. He pushed himself back up onto the couch, or did his best anyway. The angel was wiping tears of laughter from his eyes and grinning, still chuckling a little. He didn’t look very much like an angel at the moment. He just looked happy to be there.

“I like you,” Crawly decided. “Even if you’re a little cracked. Wasn’t expecting you.”

“Oh?”

Crawly nodded. “You’re nice. Not angel-nice, actual nice. Nicest angel I ever met.”

“Why, thank you.” The angel smiled at him. “You’re certainly the nicest demon I’ve ever met.”

Crowley shuffled around, trying to find his wine glass, which had somehow gotten lost. “Any more of that ‘wine?’” he asked, pointing at the bottle on the table. “Don’t suppose—Uh. Wait a sec.” He found the glass, picked it up, and sat back. “D’you say demon?”

“No, Crowley, I called you a lemon.” The angel filled Crawly’s glass, though not quite as generously as he had before, and then considered him for a moment. “Hm, I don’t think you’d make a very good lemon. You’re not nearly sour enough. And much too sweet.”

“Oh.” That didn’t make much sense, but it did make more sense than if the angel knew he was a demon. Crawly shrugged and took another sip of wine.

The angel glanced at the clock. “It’s getting close to dinnertime,” he observed. “No need t’sober up just yet, dear. I can cook for us again.”

“Crepes,” said Crawly helpfully, replacing the bottle. That was the only food that he could remember.

The angel looked at him in surprise. “Again? I didn’t know you even liked them, considering past experiences.”

Crawly shook his head. It would be more interesting to try something new, anyway. “Nah, nevermind. Was thinking of something else.”

“What were you thinking about crepes, then?”

Uh. What else did Crawly know about crepes? “Paris,” he remembered suddenly.

The angel straightened. “Yes?”

Crawly hadn’t been planning to finish the thought. That was the whole thought. That was it.

For some reason, the angel looked very invested in what he had to say. “What about Paris, Crowley?”

Was this about whatever he had missed in their conversation earlier? Crawly struggled to piece together something coherent out of the sludge that his brain had turned into. Some mostly-functioning part of his brain rose to the surface and pointed out that he didn’t need to figure it out right now, he just needed to direct the angel’s attention away from whatever it was that he was supposed to know. “We could go,” he said at last, as an idea struck him. “For the crepes. Hopefully won’t have to die for them.”

He couldn’t help but feel a little proud of himself. That was sure to occupy the angel, considering how much he seemed to enjoy food, and what rave reviews he had given the Paris crepes—

The angel caught his breath. His eyes widened, and Crawly could swear that they were sparkling. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, Crowley, really?”

That was a little more of a reaction than Crawly had expected. Paris was just a place that had crepes, right? Hopefully he wouldn’t be expected to drive there. Maybe the phone could show him how. “Uh…sssure.”

The angel beamed. His face shone so bright that Crawly was very glad of the dark glasses. Then the smile flickered. “We don’t have to,” he said. “We’re neither of us very up-to-speed on our French, and I know how you feel about the country in general.”

How many steps were involved in getting these crepes? It had been easy when the angel made them in the kitchen earlier. Crawly was starting to wonder exactly what he had just suggested. Well, how was he supposed to back out now? _Just kidding! Haha, got you. Should have seen the look on your face._ The look on his face, unfortunately, made it impossible to take back. “S’not a problem.” He made a mental note to ask the phone about the word “country,” and also “French” while he was at it.

The angel’s face absolutely melted. “That would be lovely, dearest,” he said. “It’s been a long time since we took a proper holiday.”

Crawly couldn’t look at him anymore. It was too bright, even with the glasses on. “Ghk.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the angel start to reach for him, and—Oh no, not now, when Crawly didn’t even know what had just happened and his head still felt weird and his face was unusually warm—

He tensed, and thankfully the angel noticed and drew back. “Oh—Sorry, I forgot. I’m just very glad.” He settled for lightly patting Crawly’s arm instead.

That alone was hard enough to cope with right now. Crawly tried to draw a breath, and a wheezing noise came out. What had he gotten himself into?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so glad Crawly finally figured out that he's in a parallel universe where he's a human named Crowley. That explains everything.


	5. And you may ask yourself, "How do I work this?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I joked about this last time but this is hands down the most comments I've ever gotten at this point in a fic. THANK YOU so much to everyone who keeps reading! Every single comment always makes me smile, and it makes this quarantine so much better. Y'all are all so lovely, and I love this fandom so damn much.
> 
> Anyway here's some ineffable idiots being idiots.

Crowley’s mind might be going.

It was the only explanation Aziraphale could come up with for why he didn’t remember their last trip to Paris. He doubted Crowley would have suggested the trip otherwise, at least not without some scathing insults about France to offset how sweet and protective he was. The idea of a holiday was so lovely that, in the moment, Aziraphale had been swept off his feet and forgot to worry about him. But then Crowley passed out on the sofa after dinner without bothering to sober up, and Aziraphale went back over the conversation in his head, and he realized just how troubling it was.

Maybe, when they went, something would come back to him. It was a pity the Bastille wasn’t still around. That would have jogged his memory for sure. And if Crowley didn’t remember…well, if he didn’t, they would still have a lovely time. They always did.

It had been such a relief to see Crowley enjoying himself, even if it was under the influence of a large quantity of wine. He had drunk much more than usual, which was usually a bad sign, but he was happy-drunk this time, and had embarked on a few of his signature incoherent rants, which was very entertaining as well as being a good sign. After six thousand years on Earth, to still marvel at the way plants grew…Aziraphale smiled. His demon was so endearing when he got excited.

He wondered if he would get to see that Crowley when they went to Paris, or if he’d have to drown him in wine before the demon laughed like that again.

With a sigh, Aziraphale looked down at the unconscious demon on the sofa, his limbs thrown out every which way, face smashed into the pillow. Aziraphale snapped his fingers to miracle Crowley into his usual black silk pajamas. At least he was sleeping peacefully. That nightmare the previous night had sounded awful. Still, a little extra miracle couldn’t hurt. Aziraphale whispered a wish for sweet dreams, picked up Crowley’s phone from the table, and retreated into the bedroom.

“Hello, Anathema?” he said in a hush when he closed the door and dialed her number. “Sorry to call so late.”

“It’s only ten, Aziraphale.”

Oh. Right. He was thrown off by the fact that Crowley was already asleep. “Yes. Ah, will you still be able to come by tomorrow?”

“Sure. Crowley’s not feeling any better, then?”

“There have been…developments.” Aziraphale glanced at the door behind himself and lowered his voice. “He is undergoing a molt. It seems to be causing him some physical discomfort, and perhaps some stress.”

“Oh.” Anathema sounded relieved. “That sounds normal. Why do you sound so worried?”

“He, um.” This was going to be difficult to explain. “Something…something may be affecting his mind. His…long-term memory.”

Anathema drew a breath. “Oh.”

“Yes.” Aziraphale swallowed. “I-I think. I’m not sure.” He left out the fact that he wasn’t sure because Crowley wouldn’t talk about it.

“I, um…I’m sorry, Aziraphale,” she started. “I don’t know how much I’ll be able to do.”

“Could you at least take a look at his aura for me?” asked Aziraphale. “Even if you can’t fix the problem, it would be helpful to know where we might start. And it will be lovely to see you again, of course,” he added.

“It has been a while,” said Anathema. “Alright. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Aziraphale drew a deep breath, glanced at the demon on the sofa, and threw open the drapes. The room filled with light.

Crowley flinched awake with a whine of protest, curling into an even tighter ball and squeezing his eyes shut. “Hurts.”

“That’s your own fault for drinking so irresponsibly yesterday.” Aziraphale went to the other side of the room to open those curtains as well. “It’s a lovely day outside. Rise and shine.”

“ _You_ rise and shine.”

“I have, you will note,” said Aziraphale. “Young Miss Device is coming for a visit today.”

Crowley looked like he was trying to squint at Aziraphale without actually opening his eyes. “Who?”

“Anathema,” Aziraphale said. “Book girl.”

“Oh,” Crowley nodded. “Course. Book girl.”

The light seemed to be hurting him, so Aziraphale picked up Crowley’s sunglasses from the coffee table and handed them to him. He put them on gratefully. “She will be here any minute, so you had best get dressed and brush your hair. And do something about that hangover, while you’re at it.”

“Hang over what?”

Aziraphale should have woken Crowley earlier. The demon could be so difficult in the mornings. “Let me, my dear,” he said, kneeling and gently touching Crowley’s temples. He shut his eyes for a moment and focused on driving out the pain. “Better?”

“Yeah.” Crowley sounded surprised. “Thanks.”

“Good.” Aziraphale got to his feet. “Now get some clothes on, please.”

Crowley looked down at his pajamas with a frown. “Why d’you keep doing that while I’m asleep?”

“Because you insist on falling asleep fully dressed,” said Aziraphale. “You’ll wrinkle them that way, and I know how nice and neat you like to keep them. Now could you please get a move on?”

Crowley got to his feet gingerly, like he expected his head to start hurting again. “Why’s book girl coming?”

Aziraphale sighed. “Well, I don’t think it’s any secret that you haven’t been well, dear.”

“M’fine, angel.”

“No you’re not,” said Aziraphale. “I don’t know why you won’t tell me, but I’m not going to sit idly by and do nothing. So please, get dressed, and let the witch doctor have a look at you, and then I might feel better and stop fussing about it so much.”

“What if we skip the other steps, and you just stop fussing?”

“Stop—stop trying to brush me off!” Aziraphale resisted the urge to stamp his foot indignantly, which never did anything but amuse Crowley. “It’s not helping anything. I’m terribly worried about you, Crowley.”

Crowley blinked and lowered his gaze a bit. It was difficult to tell what he was thinking with the sunglasses on. “Sssorry.”

He only hissed like that when he was stressed or worked up about something. Perhaps Aziraphale had gone overboard. “You don’t need to be sorry,” he said in a softer tone. “Just make yourself presentable, please.”

Crowley nodded and retreated into the bedroom. Aziraphale sat down with a sigh. Maybe Crowley would be willing to talk to Anathema about whatever he was hiding. Aziraphale would leave them alone in the room for a bit and then follow up with Anathema later, just in case. It was a long shot, but if Crowley wouldn’t talk to him, it was the only chance he could think of to figure it out.

Crawly managed to find another dress in Crowley’s closet, thank hell, so he wouldn’t need to deal with the pants again. He was brushing his fingers through his tuft of hair, wondering what he could do with it now that so much of it was gone, when he heard the front door open. He shuffled over to the bedroom door and put his ear to the crack to see what information he could glean about Anathema before he made his entrance. He understood “book” and “girl” separately, but it was anybody’s guess how they connected.

“Hello, Miss Device!” he heard the angel say. “How are you? Classes going well?”

“Classes are good, Aziraphale. Thanks for asking.”

 _Aziraphale._ Finally, Crawly had a name for him. Well, one that wasn’t an obvious alias. And he’d said classes—That meant school, didn’t it? She must be a young human. One who was trying to learn things. Crawly liked what he knew about her so far.

“I’ll put on some tea.” Aziraphale raised his voice. “Crowley will be with us in a jiffy.”

What in the blazes was a jiffy? “Coming, angel,” Crowley called out, ran his hand through his hair-tuft a few more times (it didn’t seem to be able to do anything other than stick straight up, so he let it), and returned to the sitting room.

Book girl turned out to be a human with interesting taste in clothes and bright, intelligent eyes. “Hi, Crowley,” she said, smiling as he came in.

That made three humans and one phone who recognized him by that name. “Book girl,” said Crawly, nodding in greeting. “How’re things at school?”

“School’s alright,” she said. He’d guessed right, then. “Aziraphale tells me you’ve been feeling under the weather?”

Crawly glanced at the angel, wondering how much he might have said, and how much he suspected. He hadn’t realized until this morning just how worried the angel was. Well, Crawly would be worried too, if his husband was suddenly replaced by a demon, and he was an angel, and also, had a husband.

Aziraphale clapped his hands with a little smile. “Well, I’ll go see about the tea, shall I? You two make yourselves comfortable.” He went into the kitchen and shut the door behind him.

Perfect. Crawly jumped up and sat forward on the couch. “I need your help,” he half-whispered to Anathema. “And I need you to swear you won’t tell the angel.”

She blinked, alarmed. “What—”

“Come on, do us a favor? For your old friend Crowley?” It was a dirty trick, but then, he was a demon. “You can swear on anything important to you. Your own life, or a friend’s, or—”

“Why are you keeping things from Aziraphale?”

Crawly sighed impatiently. This would be so much easier if Aziraphale and Crowley weren’t such a perfect couple. “I can’t explain until I know you won’t tell him. Look, it’s me,” he said, taking a bit of a leap. “It’s Crowley. You know I’d never hurt Aziraphale.”

Hopefully she would believe that. Nobody else seemed to think Crowley was the sort of person to disappear and leave Aziraphale by himself. And yet, here they were.

Anathema shot an uncertain glance toward the kitchen door and drew a deep breath. “Fine. I swear on my unfinished thesis, I won’t tell him.”

Crawly didn’t know what a “thesis” was, but it seemed important enough to make the oath binding. “Alright, don’t scream,” he said, holding out a hand. With the other, he took off the glasses, revealing his slitted, yellow, glaringly demonic eyes.

“Oh,” said Anathema. “That’s odd.”

Crawly blinked. He had been expecting much more of a reaction. “Odd?”

“They’re not usually completely yellow like that,” she said. “Are they? I’ve only seen them maybe twice, but I thought they still had whites at the edges.”

Crawly looked at her blankly. She didn’t seem to understand. “I’m a demon,” he explained.

“I know you’re a demon, Crowley,” she said. “Are your eyes the problem? Aziraphale said—”

“I’m not Crowley,” he interrupted. “Crowley—Crowley’s a demon?”

She looked at him, confused, and then her eyes narrowed warily. “What do you mean, you’re not Crowley?”

“My name’s Crawly,” he said. “Are you telling me that angel married a _demon?_ ”

Anathema scrambled off the couch, making an X at him with her fingers. “Get out of Crowley,” she snapped. “I didn’t even know demons could possess each other. Leave him alone!”

“Why does everyone think—Look, I don’t know how this happened,” Crawly insisted. “I just woke up here—”

“In Crowley’s body?”

“Two people can look the same!” He pointed at the kitchen door. “Really, though, a demon? Does he know?”

“Of course he knows,” said Anathema. “Where’s—”

“He married a demon _on purpose?_ ”

“Where is Crowley?” she demanded.

“I don’t know,” Crawly admitted. “I knew he wasn’t a typical angel, but—”

“You don’t _know?_ ”

“I told you, I just woke up here!” He raised his hands defensively. “I’m trying to find him. The angel thinks I’m him. He doesn’t know Crowley’s gone, and he never will. Understand?”

Anathema calmed down, lowered her hands, and braced herself against the edge of the sofa. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, so you’re Crowley’s twin, or something.” She glanced at him suspiciously and muttered, “Hopefully not an evil twin.”

“I was thinking more parallel-universe,” said Crawly. “But, circling back—How the heaven does an angel go for a _demon_?” A human was mad enough. Marrying a demon was insane at best, and suicide at worst.

“You’re not surprised a demon would fall for an angel?”

“Well, not—” Crawly stopped himself before he said, “not him,” realized what that sounded like, and cleared his throat. “Uh, Crowley. Gotta find him. How d’we do that?”

Anathema thought for a moment. “I could try summoning him.”

Humans could do that? Crawly snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “Yes. Perfect. Do that. Let me know when you have him. Summon me there too, if you like.” Anathema had spirit, but he wasn’t sure if she had what it took to talk sense into Crowley. All of this would be useless if they couldn’t convince him to come home.

“I can do that,” she said, nodding and pushing her glasses up her nose. “Anything else I should know about?”

It seemed to Crawly that she knew everything she needed to know. Crawly, on the other hand, did not. The longer he stayed here, the more he realized how little he knew. “Quick question,” he began.

“Shoot.”

“What’s Paris?”

She looked at him blankly, and then laughed. “What do you mean, ‘what’s Paris?’”

“Don’t—You don’t have to laugh at me. I’m new here. What’s Paris?”

“It’s a city in France,” she said. “Why—”

“What’s France?”

“It’s another country. Why do you need to know about Paris?”

“I don’t know what a country is. You’re gonna have to give me a little more information.”

“It’s—Another place, across the channel. The channel is water,” she said, as Crawly opened his mouth to ask about that, too. “Look, why does it matter?”

None of this information was useful to Crawly. He might as well lay out the context for her. “We were talking yesterday,” he said, “and Paris came up, and so I said why don’t we go for crepes, and I guess that was a bigger deal than I thought—”

Anathema’s eyes widened in horror. “You suggested getting crepes…in Paris?”

“Yeah.” Crawly started to sweat. “What, why, what does that mean?”

She put her face into her hands. “You didn’t.”

“Why, what? What did I do?”

“You did not,” she said into her palms, “plan a romantic getaway to fucking Paris—”

“A _what?_ ” Crawley’s voice shot up several octaves. He bolted up off the sofa. “That’s not—fuck—”

“—With _another demon’s husband?_ ”

“I didn’t mean,” Crawly stuttered. “I didn’t—didn’t know!”

“Well, cancel it, then!”

“Right, yeah,” Crawly nodded, swallowed, then shut his eyes and shook his head. “Wait, I can’t—wait—”

“What do you mean you can’t?” Anathema shrieked.

“I—” Crawly glanced at the kitchen door. The trip had meant so much to the angel. If he just called the whole thing off… “I-I can’t go to Paris,” he gasped. “Got to—Got to find Crowley. Fast.” Then it would be fine. They wouldn’t have to call off the trip, and Aziraphale could go with the right demon, and everything would be fine.

“Yeah,” Anathema agreed. “As soon as possible. I’ll get back to my dorm and summon him. _Do not_ go to Paris,” she added, with a glare.

“I won’t,” Crawly said, holding up his hands. “I won’t, I didn’t even mean to—”

“Good.” Anathema rubbed her temples. “I’ll get the summoning ritual ready as soon as I can. Dammit, I was going to study tonight.”

“Summoning,” said Crawly. “Good. Yes. That’ll bring him back in no time?”

“Well, in the time it takes to prepare everything,” she said. “So in a day or two.”

Not ideal, but Crawly could wait a day or two. More importantly, he could stall the Paris excursion for a day or two. Maybe even more than that. “Okay.” He drew a deep breath and tried to calm his rattling nerves. Crowley would be back soon, and then he could go back to his regularly scheduled wiles. Meet his troublemaking quota, and then report back downstairs. Get back to his normal, demonic, angel-free life.

“He’s been making tea for a while,” Anathema muttered, frowning at the kitchen door.

Crawly followed her gaze. “Does it not usually take that long?”

She shook her head. Crawly wondered, with a flash of panic, whether the angel had been listening to their conversation. But now that they were both quiet, he could hear Aziraphale humming to himself on the other side of the door.

“Maybe we should check on him?” Anathema suggested.

Crawly nodded. “You do it.” At the moment, he wasn’t sure he could look at Aziraphale and ask anything other than, _Seriously, a demon? Are you out of your mind?_

Anathema gave an impatient huff before she got up and cracked open the door to the kitchen. “Everything okay in here, Aziraphale?”

“Yes, dear girl,” came the angel’s bright voice. “I’m sorry I was so long. I thought I might put together a cheese plate, and then I got distracted. By all the cheese. You know how it is.” He emerged into the sitting room with a platter of yellow and white stuff in one hand and a very oddly-shaped vessel in the other. “I’ll just fetch us some mugs,” he said, setting them on the coffee table. “And—Oh! Oh.”

His eyes landed on the sunglasses on the coffee table, and his face lit up. He looked up at Crawly with a soft smile that made the corners of his eyes crinkle. Then he returned to the kitchen.

Crawly looked straight ahead, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his knuckles pressed against his mouth. So those were the eyes he’d wanted to see. Crawly’s—Crowley’s—hideous, monstrous, yellow-slitted eyes. Demon eyes. No one had ever thought they were worth looking at before.

Anathema cleared her throat. “Um—”

“Shut it,” he hissed. “Just—Let’s get Crowley back here.”

Soon. He would be back very soon. Which was good, because Crawly didn’t know how much more of this he could deal with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think it's gonna be okay guys. I can't imagine there would be any complications when Anathema summons Crowley.


	6. And you may ask yourself, "Am I right? Am I wrong?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy April Fool's Day! I hope you enjoy this continued story about two of my favorite fools.

Crawly disappeared in the middle of dinner the next day. One moment he was sampling the pasta Aziraphale had made and insisting that it was very good, no, really, and the next his chair was gone and he collapsed in a heap onto a different floor, still holding the fork. “Oh, hi,” he said, seeing Anathema in front of him. “You got him yet?”

Anathema blinked. “Got who?”

“Crowley.”

She frowned. “You were supposed to be Crowley.”

Crawly didn’t know what to say other than, “Oh.”

“I can try again.” She grabbed a fuzzy black block, knelt on the floor, and rubbed out part of the complicated white circle that surrounded Crawly. “Step out. Try not to smudge any of it. This took forever to get right.”

Crawly got to his feet and stepped carefully over the white lines. “Are you planning on letting Aziraphale know where I’ve disappeared to?”

“Oh—Shit.” She jumped back to her feet, scrambled for her phone, and called him. “Aziraphale? Yes, he’s right here. Sorry. Just practicing my demon-summoning, and—” she paused. “Well, no, not anytime soon, I just thought it would be good to—” she swallowed and nodded. “Yes, I will give you fair warning before I do it again. Sorry to ruin your dinner. Have a nice night.” She set the phone down with a sigh.

“So,” said Crawly.

“I don’t know why it brought you instead,” she said. “It was supposed to—Well, hang on, let me see if I’ve missed anything—”

Crawly walked around the circle, looking over it carefully in case the squiggles and shapes might start making sense to him. They didn’t. It looked impressive, though.

“Can you tell what’s wrong with it?”

He shrugged. “When I want to talk to a demon, I usually just shout across the office.”

“I’ll get it,” Anathema insisted. “I’ll just—I’ll try again.” She redrew the missing bit of the circle, picked up the book, and started chanting nonsense words.

“Are you sure that’s right?” Crawly interrupted. “That doesn’t sound like real words.”

“It’s Latin.”

“It’s gibberish, is what it is.”

“Let me handle the summoning, okay?” Stifling her frustration, she started the chant over. Crawly watched the circle for some sign of his doppelganger. The lights flickered, the temperature dropped, and then—

Crawly jumped two feet forward without meaning to, and landed back inside the circle. “Huh.”

Anathema scowled down at the book, then looked up at him curiously. “Are you sure you’re not Crowley? You’re not just pulling my leg?”

“Am I—am I _sure?_ ” Crawly repeated. “Yeah, no, yeah, I love pretending to be sick, worrying Aziraphale half to death, and then inventing elaborate and implausible scenarios so you’d interrupt my dinner by dragging me across town. It’s my favorite hobby. Next I’m gonna try faking my own death, ‘cause that’s the sort of messed-up thing I enjoy—”

“Okay, fine,” Anathema cut him off. “No need to be sarcastic.”

“Why the heaven would I make this up?”

“I don’t know!” She slammed the book down on the table. “I don’t know why this useless ritual is doing this. I followed all the directions. You have no idea how hard it was to find goat’s blood.”

“Well…we’ve got kinda similar names,” said Crawly. “Maybe if you said it too quick—”

“I didn’t,” she snapped.

Crawly thought a moment more. He and Crowley did look identical. And if Crawly had ended up in Crowley’s universe, there was a possibility that they had swapped places. His heart sank. What if the circle had brought him because he was the closest thing to Crowley there was in this universe? What if Crowley couldn’t be reached by magic?

“Are there any other methods you could use?” Crawly asked.

“I guess,” she said. “This was the most foolproof one, but—”

“Try the others,” he said, practically begging. “You’ve got to keep trying. He’s—he’s got train tickets for Thursday.”

Anathema’s eyes widened. “Three days from now?”

Crawly nodded. “I already had to stall to push it back that much. I can’t go to Paris, I can’t—”

She nodded several times. “I’ll try. I must have something.”

“Good,” said Crawly, with a sigh of relief. “Good, good, good. Um. How do I get back from here?”

Anathema called him something called an Uber, which turned out to be remarkably similar to the car back at Aziraphale’s house. Crawly got inside, wondering if this one would be able to sing as well as the other one, and then the whole thing started _moving_.

Crawly grabbed onto the door and watched in amazement as the world passed by. There were so many colors, so many people, so many different buildings and trees and things he didn’t have words for… “Holy shit.”

“You alright, pal?” asked the man in the front seat.

“We’re _moving._ ”

He shook his head and muttered, “Guess you’re having a good time.”

“How does this work?”

About ten minutes later, Crawly disappeared again.

“I was having fun,” he protested, getting up from Anathema’s floor. “Did you know cars eat gasoline? Also, what’s a kite? The guy kept comparing me to one.”

Anathema sighed in frustration, broke the circle again to let him out, and called him another Uber.

The next day, he woke up on the floor in Anathema’s dorm. “Again?” he said blearily.

Anathema, who was also asleep but was lucky enough to be in a proper bed, jumped up. “Who?”

“Crawly.”

She groaned and fell back into the pillow. Crawly had to call Aziraphale on the drive home to make sure the angel wouldn’t fuss too much. Not that that stopped him. “In the middle of the night?” he said, outraged. “She ought to be getting a proper night’s sleep to be alert in her classes. Not to mention that she was also disturbing you at that hour.”

“I don’t think she’s doing it on purpose,” said Crawly. “Not to me, anyway.”

“Not to—Who the hell is she trying to summon, then?”

The rest of that had been a fun conversation. Anathema had gotten a stern talking-to, as well, and promised to stop meddling in demon-summoning. She summoned Crawly again later that evening. Aziraphale was not angry, he made clear, but he was very disappointed in her.

“I certainly hope she knocks it off before we leave on Thursday,” he said in a huff, after Crawly’s uber dropped him off at the house. “I may have to resort to some much stronger language.”

“I’m sure it won’t come to that,” said Crawly, who hoped it wouldn’t. Thursday was less than two days away, and the idea of going to Paris with the angel was…Well, it wasn’t that he didn’t want to go. Exploring another city, once he learned what a city was, sounded like fun. He just couldn’t.

He clattered like a ragdoll onto Anathema’s floor on Wednesday night with a horrible sinking feeling in his chest. The witch gave him a tired look. “Please tell me you’re Crowley.”

Crawly swallowed. “Is that the last one you have?”

She snapped the book shut, stood for a moment with her eyes closed, and then set it on the table much more quietly than it looked like she wanted to. “I’ll call you a ride,” she said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what keeps going wrong.”

“Well, you tried,” Crawly offered, trying not to look like his heart was making an escape attempt through his ribcage. Nearly a week, and they still couldn’t find Crowley. It was starting to look like they might never find him. Which meant…

Crawly sat up, rubbed his eyes under the sunglasses, and fought the impulse to curse as loudly as he could.

He might have to go to Paris.

Aziraphale looked down at the spot on the sofa where Crowley had been sprawled just a moment ago, and muttered, “Not again.” This summoning business was getting tiresome. He didn’t understand why Anathema wouldn’t just stop doing it.

He had a feeling Crowley knew, and wasn’t telling him, which was somehow worse than the constant disappearances. Crowley had been getting a little better, but very, very slowly. He still avoided driving, and cooking, and his plants were starting to let themselves go. Aziraphale went out to the garden to give them an encouraging, but stern, talking-to, and ended up just standing there and wondering if they knew whatever Crowely was keeping from him. He asked the Bentley if she could provide any insight, but she just played “I’m Going Slightly Mad,” which was highly discouraging, and “The Great Pretender,” which only confirmed Aziraphale’s suspicions that Crowley was hiding something. Anathema was even less helpful. “Look, I really wish I could help,” she said, when Aziraphale asked her over the phone. “I do, but I can’t. It’s…Hm…Nope, sorry. I physically can’t.” She also refused to tell him what she and Crowley had discussed during her visit, or what had happened to convince him to finally stop wearing sunglasses at home. So Anathema was in on it, too.

He had consulted everyone except Crowley, who he knew would only deflect the question as he always did. He had already told Crowley he knew something was wrong, and that he would wait until Crowley was ready to discuss it. He knew it might take some time, but it had been days. It didn’t usually take this long for Crowley to come back and talk to him.

At least they had Paris to look forward to, assuming that Crowley still wanted to go. He got strangely tense whenever Aziraphale brought it up, though he always dismissed Aziraphale’s offers to call it off. The offers were halfhearted, anyway, and Aziraphale always hoped Crowley would turn them down. He very much wanted to go. It would be grand. He just wanted Crowley to also want to go.

With a sigh, Aziraphale straightened his reading glasses and tried to focus back on his book. All he could do right now was wait for Crowley to come home.

Crawly could still fix this. There couldn’t be that many Anthony Crowleys around who looked exactly like him. He could probably circulate a photograph and pass it off as a search for a long-lost brother. He might even be able to put something up on the internet. Assuming, of course, that Crowley was still in this universe at all. If the summoning hadn’t managed to dredge him up…

It wouldn’t do any good to think like that. Crawly spent the Uber ride brainstorming, and texted a few ideas to Anathema to see what she might have to say. She didn’t answer. Probably sleeping. She didn’t seem to have done enough of that in the past few days.

Aziraphale was waiting for him outside when the car pulled up, looking very put out. “I sincerely hope that is the last time she will be doing that,” he said. “I’m quite looking forward to our holiday, and I might be inconsolable if it was cut short.”

“No, that was the last time,” said Crawly, his stomach squirming. Any hope of cancelling the trip went out the window with the word “inconsolable.”

“Would you like to go to sleep, then, dear?” the angel asked, leading him inside. “It’s rather late, and we need to be up early tomorrow.

Their train would leave in less than eight hours, which meant Crawly had less than eight hours to track down Crowley by himself and shove him onto a train so Aziraphale could go to Paris with the right demon. Crawly shook his head. “I’m not tired just yet. I think—I think I might go spend some time in the garden.” Time in the garden, he had learned, was a good excuse to get some privacy so he could bombard his phone with questions. The angel never even asked why he was yelling.

Aziraphale looked confused. “Right now? It’s pitch dark out.”

“It’s not that dark,” said Crawly. “Got to, er, make sure the plants are set to rights. Before we leave.”

“Well, you really should have seen to that in the daylight,” said Aziraphale, with a restrained eye roll, “but very well. I’ll see you inside when you come to bed.”

He’d be waiting for a long time, but that was a risk Crawly was willing to take. He hurried into the garden, huddled in his usual hiding spot behind some of the taller and bushier plants, and pulled out the phone. Between a demon and a marvel of modern technology, surely they could do something.

He fought with the phone for hours, putting all of his (severely limited) understanding of said technology to use. He even figured out how to make a post on social media, only for one of Crowley’s followers to come back and ask whether his account had been “hacked.” Crawly wasted valuable time arguing with the stranger, and then someone else chimed in to say that he was Anthony’s neighbor and had seen him in his yard just earlier today, and was this some sort of prank? So Crawly gave up on that strategy.

“Crowley?” the angel’s voice called through the overgrown plants. “Are you still out here?”

“Over here,” Crawly called, stowing the phone. He had been out here for a while, hadn’t he? “Was just about to come in.”

He followed the angel inside, glanced in the direction of the bedroom, and decided that he needed to say goodbye to the car. “She might get, y’know, lonely,” he said, inching towards the door and trying to ignore the angel’s disappointed expression. “Better go cheer her up a little before we go.”

He got in the car and started it, and the usual music started up. “ _Somehowww I have to make this final breakthrough…_ ”

“Hey,” he said. “I—”

“ _Now!_ ”

“I need to find Crowley fast,” he said, wishing the car would stop interrupting him like that all the time. “You had any new ideas?”

“— _Are they trying to tell you something? You’re missing that one final screw…_ ”

“Well, that’s just rude,” Crowley muttered, and turned the radio down. The car still wasn’t going to be helpful, then. He got out the phone again and asked, “How do I travel across dimensions?”

This led him to several videos about mathematics and geometry that, while interesting, were not very applicable to the situation. He hadn’t thought dimension-hopping would be so hard, since he’d done it himself by accident. He tried phrasing the same question in different ways, asking different apps, and checked the second and even the third pages of google. No luck.

The car was still singing quietly. “ _You know it’s time for the hammer to fall!_ ”

Crawly checked the time. He’d spent too much time looking for Crowley. He had barely over two hours left until they would need to leave, and, realistically, he wasn’t going to find Crowley in that time. It looked like he had no choice but to go to Paris in his place. He needed to know what he was in for. Bracing himself, he pressed the voice assistant button on the phone and asked, “What do people do in Paris?”

The phone rattled off a list of words that had to be made-up. Looking all of them up would take too much time, so Crawly swiped around until the screen reader landed on the photos tab, and he started scrolling through pictures. There was a cluster of glass pyramids, a big stone arch, some tall pointy metal thing…

Actually, Paris looked like mostly weird-shaped buildings. Crawly sat back in his seat. That didn’t seem so bad. He could handle looking at weird buildings with Aziraphale.

“ _You just got time to say your prayers, yeah, while you’re waiting for the hammer to, hammer to fall!_ ”

It was late. It was very late, actually, and Aziraphale was probably wondering what was taking him so long. He ought to go and get some sleep. His body was used to it now, and he was starting to get tired without it.

“Heading in for the night,” he said, patting the car’s steering wheel. “Thanks for the company. We’ll be gone a few days, just so you’re aware. You’ll be good, yeah?”

“— _de day dah, that’s okay!_ ”

Crawly took that as a yes. “Right. Good night then. Or morning.” He turned off the car and went inside.

Aziraphale looked up from his book when Crawly came in, a little startled smile flickering around his face. “Oh, there you are. I was beginning to wonder.”

His hands clutched the book so tightly that the pages crinkled. Crawly looked at them and tried to ignore the guilt gnawing at his ribcage. Why had he thought this was a good idea? By pretending to be Crowley, he was only causing the angel more worry.

“My dear, you’ve been strange lately.” Aziraphale shut the book and set it aside. “We don’t have to go to Paris. I don’t want to go if you won’t enjoy yourself.”

That wasn’t the problem. Crawly would enjoy Paris. He was interested, now, in the weird-shaped buildings and what might be inside of them, and it was a chance to get out of the house and see more of Earth. And he liked Aziraphale. The angel had an unexpectedly sharp sense of humor, and he was easy to talk to, at least when the subject matter wasn’t difficult. He was a different sort of angel, one who hummed to himself in the kitchen, got tipsy on wine, and sat for hours drawing meaning from squiggles on a page. And he was nice to demons. Well, a lot more than nice, actually, to one demon in particular. Which wasn’t Crawly.

He liked to think that they might have been friends, if circumstances had been different, but instead Crawly had to pop up and start impersonating his husband, and he wasn’t even doing a very good job. Aziraphale didn’t know who he was yet, but he did know something wasn’t right. Except Crawly didn’t know what to do about it other than keep pushing him away.

He would need to get better about that. It could be quite some time before he found Crowley, and the angel would be stuck with him until then. Right now, he needed to play the good husband and try to put Aziraphale’s mind at ease. “Nah, I want to go,” he said. “It was my idea, wasn’t it? Can’t wait.”

Aziraphale didn’t look convinced.

Crawly scratched his head awkwardly. “Look, I…Sorry I was out so long. I was on the phone with book girl. Scaring the daylights out of her about what would happen if she kept summoning me. All that fire-and-brimstone stuff. So she’s done with that,” he assured Aziraphale. “I won’t disappear and ruin the trip.”

“That’s good.” Aziraphale tried to smile. “Are you turning in for the night? Or, what’s left of it?”

Crawly nodded, and changed into his pajamas with a snap. It was a relief to be able to do that now that he knew he wasn’t supposed to be posing as a human. Aziraphale did the same and followed him into the bedroom. As far as Crawly could tell, the angel didn’t sleep, but he seemed to like to sit up and read in bed next to his husband. Crawly had gotten used to his presence by now. If he turned the other way, he almost didn’t have to think about it.

“Goodnight, my dear,” said Aziraphale, as Crawly got under the comforter and turned over. There was something uncertain in his voice when he said, “I love you.”

Crawly never knew what to do when he said that. No, that was a lie. He did know, he just hadn’t done it. It didn’t seem right. He might be a demon, but there were some lines even he didn’t want to cross. But Aziraphale was so troubled tonight, and Crawly knew he was the reason, and the angel must have noticed that his husband hadn’t said it back in almost a week. Crawly’s eyes were open, looking at the wall, away from Aziraphale. It didn’t matter, he told himself. It was just another lie to keep up the ruse. The angel would never know who had said it. “Love you, too,” he said, in a voice that sounded much too small.


	7. And you may say to yourself, "My God! What have I done?"

Crawly was still groggy when Aziraphale woke him the next morning. He needed the help of a few extra miracles to get dressed, and almost forgot until Aziraphale was loading their suitcases into someone else’s car that they were going to Paris today. Crawly was going to Paris, as Aziraphale’s husband. He was going to pretend to be the angel’s husband. In Paris. Where they were going.

The car dropped them off at the train station, and he followed Aziraphale with their suitcases as the angel bustled around looking for the right platform. It was going to be fine, he told himself. It was just weird buildings. If he gave the angel enough crepes, maybe he’d forget Crawly was even there.

They boarded the train and sat down beside each other, and a little while later it lurched into motion and zipped down the rail at an outrageous speed. Crawly looked out the window with what was meant to be nonchalant ease, and wondered how it all worked, and pretended not to see the reflection of the angel who sat next to him reading through a pair of glasses that he didn’t need. The train hummed quietly around them, and the hypnotic blur of colors made him dizzy, until he felt like he had drunk just a little bit too much wine. His head nodded, and his eyes drooped shut.

A burst of light through his eyelids woke him. He cracked open an eye, and noticed that his sunglasses were gone. He face was leaning against something soft. He tensed when he realized what it was.

“We’ve just come out of the Chunnel, my dear,” said Aziraphale quietly. “You can sleep if you like. There’s still a little ways to go.”

Crawly gave a long blink, still only half-awake. He shouldn’t be napping on an angel, but this angel was comfortable, and he had said it was okay, and Crawly didn’t want to argue with himself right now. He laid his head back on Aziraphale’s shoulder and shut his eyes. It was like resting on a warm sofa. “I’ll wake you when we arrive,” said Aziraphale.

Crawly barely heard. He was already asleep.

They pulled into the station, and Aziraphale nudged Crawly awake and handed him back his sunglasses. The station in Paris looked very similar to the one in London, but the angel beamed around at it as he stepped out of the train. “Goodness, this is different,” he said. “Of course, I didn’t come by train last time…I must say, though, it is a great deal more pleasant without all the…” He cleared his throat and made a chopping motion with one hand.

“Definitely a big improvement,” said Crawly, wondering what he might be referring to. All he could gather about Aziraphale and Crowley’s last visit to Paris was that crepes were involved, and possibly someone had died. Possibly because of the crepes.

“Oh, there’s the information center,” said Aziraphale, and probably would have physically dragged Crawly through the station if he hadn’t requested less contact. He snatched up a bit of colorful paper off a stand and put on his silly little glasses. “What would you like to do first?” he asked Crawly as he unfolded the paper. “I thought it would be nice to explore Montmartre, and perhaps we could see the view from the Sacre-Coeur Basilica while we’re at it, and of course we simply must spend time at the Louvre…”

Crawly probably should have done at least a little bit of planning, seeing as the whole trip had been his idea. He would have, if he’d thought he was going to be the one going. He looked down at the paper and pretended he understood what it meant. “Well, if we _must_ see the Louvre.”

Aziraphale looked up with a smile. “We can do that first, then, and get it out of the way. But what did you want to see?”

_Just you, looking like this,_ Crowley would probably have said, and Aziraphale would have scolded him for being such a flatterer but given him one of those soft smiles anyway. Crawly was not Crowley. He was supposed to be, but when he tried to say the line, he couldn’t do it. “Uh…Whatever you want’s fine,” he mumbled instead.

“You are far too indulgent,” said Aziraphale. “But I’m afraid I’m too selfish not to take you up on that. Very well, the Louvre first, although you may have to drag me away if you want to go anywhere else. You know how I am at museums.”

“Don’t I ever.” Crawly wondered how Aziraphale was at museums, and also what a museum was.

They had to drop off their luggage at someplace called a hotel first, and then took a cab to the glass pyramids Crawly had seen online. They walked unnoticed past the line of people outside and entered the building. Aziraphale picked up another piece of colored folded-up paper and skimmed through it. “Is there anything in particular you’d like to see?” Aziraphale asked. “Or shall we just wander and get lost?”

Crawly shrugged. “We’d probably get lost anyway.”

Aziraphale hummed in agreement and pocketed the paper. “What about we start in…Oh, I don’t know, that direction?”

They cut to the front of another line and entered another part of the building. A museum, Crawly gathered, was a place with huge crowds of people, stark white walls, and lots of very old statues. Aziraphale walked between the rows of statues, hands clasped behind his back, examining each one with interest. Crawly did the same, but with worse posture. A good number of the statues were falling apart. He didn’t see why they didn’t just make some new ones.

Aziraphale gave a little “Oh,” and pointed through the crowd. At one of the staircase landings, rising above a sea of heads, stood the stone figure of a woman with wings spread out behind her. It would have been beautiful if she wasn’t missing both arms and a head.

“That’s very nearly how I ended up last time,” said Aziraphale.

Crawly snorted. Was that what had happened? He’d nearly gotten his whole head cut off over bloody crepes?

The angel looked at him like that tiny chuckle was the best thing he’d ever heard. Crawly figured he might as well say what he was thinking. “You’re ridiculous.”

Aziraphale looked very pleased about that. “And yet you still put up with me.”

“Oh, it’s a trying task, angel.”

“You must have the patience of a saint.”

“I—Nn—You take that back!”

The angel snickered as Crawly reminded him that he was a demon, because surely even Crowley had some dignity left. Crawly didn’t know how much dignity a demon could have left after marrying an angel, but he couldn’t say it was an unfair trade. Crowley had so much here, he was comfortable, he was happy, he was _loved._ Demons just didn’t get that. He must be mad to have left all this behind.

Aziraphale turned, smiling, to get his attention, and Crawly let himself imagine for a brief moment that he was Crowley.

_No._ None of this was for him. He was here because of a mistake. He’d done nothing but cause problems ever since he arrived, and he had lied to Aziraphale nonstop. Every smile, every nice word, it was all stolen. This life wasn’t his. Aziraphale wasn’t his.

“Crowley?”

He’d done it again, he’d gone and screwed up by not being Crowley and now the angel was worrying about him again. He forced a casual posture. “What’s up?”

Aziraphale blinked, frowning, but apparently decided not to ask about whatever he’d seen in Crawly’s face or body language. “I was going to say, I think I’ve had about enough of antiquities. They really don’t compare to Greece and Rome in their heyday, do they?”

“Not even close,” Crawly agreed automatically.

“Shall we wander to another wing, then? I’m certain there are some Vermeers here somewhere.”

They ended up in another area with fascinating rectangles on all the walls. Crawly walked from one to the next, entranced. They were almost like photographs, except they weren’t. They were also almost like the drawings on Deborah’s fridge, except they were miles above and beyond those. Was this what she’d meant, when she said kids weren’t good at things _yet_? Could a human really go from drawing wonky red circles with flat green leaves, to creating this—this startlingly realistic fruit basket in front of him? He felt like he could have plucked one of those apples right out of the canvas. He could practically hear the crunch it would make when he bit into it. A human had really drawn that? With their hands?

He didn’t know how long he stared at it before he realized Aziraphale wasn’t with him.

“Angel?” He looked around, and peeked into the adjoining rooms, but there was no sign of his telltale fluffy white hair. “Angel!”

Someone shushed him, and he shushed them back with more sarcasm, and then ran his hands through his hair as he looked around again. It was fine, it was fine, he had just lost his fake husband in a maze full of crowds, and he hadn’t been paying attention to which way they’d come from, and he didn’t know how to get out, and he couldn’t—he couldn’t even read, for Satan’s sake, and the people here spoke a language he didn’t understand—

His phone buzzed, and he jumped and pulled it out of his pocket. Aziraphale had just texted him. “Where are you, my dear?” said the robotic voice of the screen reader. “I thought you were just behind me. I went down a staircase and now I think I’m in France.”

Crawly sighed in relief. He pressed the voice assistant button. “Text Aziraphale, ‘I sure bloody hope you’re still in France.’”

“You know what I mean,” Aziraphale texted back a moment later. “I’m with the French paintings. I will wait for you here.”

It took a while for Crawly to find him again. Everything here was so confusing, and there were humans in suits in almost every room watching him suspiciously and putting him on edge, and at one point he turned a corner, came face-to-face with a painting involving a diamond-shaped creature bleeding onto a tablecloth, and nearly had a heart attack. Damn it, damn it, where was Aziraphale?

Then there he was, sitting serenely on a bench and contemplating a painting so full of itself that it took up half the wall. “There you are,” said Crawly, hurrying over, equal parts relieved and angry. “Can’t just—wander away like that, you daft—”

“Well, you’re the one who got distracted by the still lifes,” Aziraphale argued. “Goodness, you look a little shell-shocked.”

Crawly pointed back the way he had come. “There is a—a _thing,_ down there, a square with a face on it—”

“Do you mean the ray?”

How could he be so calm about this? “It was bleeding,” he said. “And practically smiling. I don’t trust it.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” Aziraphale tutted, and Crawly honestly couldn’t tell whether he was making fun of him. “Remind me never to take you to an exhibit on surrealism. Shall we take a break, then? It is around lunchtime, and I was promised crepes.”

“Sssure.” He hoped Crowley didn’t like surrealism, since Crawly had just gotten him a lifetime ban. “Lunch. Yep.”

Aziraphale found a “lovely little creperie,” and Crawly sat down to find out what was so amazing about crepes from Paris. He ordered the same thing Aziraphale did, and the angel picked out a bottle of wine for them. “This has been a wonderful morning,” said Aziraphale, clinking glasses with him before he drank. “We should get out of England more often. I wonder we never thought of it before.”

Crawly nodded and hoped Aziraphale would wait a little while before he felt like taking a trip again. He ought to go with his real husband.

The crepes arrived, and Crawly picked up his fork and took a bite. It was good, sure, but didn’t meet the expectations that had been set for it. “Really don’t see what all the fuss is about,” he said, looking up. “What’s—”

The crepes were doing something amazing to Aziraphale’s face. He positively glowed with delight, his eyes shut, cheeks puffed out just a little as he chewed. He actually hummed as he swallowed, and when he opened his eyes, he put a hand to his heart. “Simply marvelous,” he muttered, smiling down at his plate. “I’m sorry, dear, you were saying?”

Crawly couldn’t remember what he had been saying. “Nn, nothing,” he stuttered. “Nevermind.” He looked fixedly down at his plate, took another bite, and tried to ignore whatever was happening in his chest.

Over the rest of lunch, Aziraphale made enough comments about how much he enjoyed the Louvre, and how little of the museum they had actually seen, that Crawly got the message and suggested they go back. That got him another of those smiles that he didn’t deserve, and he tried not to look directly at it. Luckily, the sunglasses let him look away without letting Aziraphale know that was what he was doing.

Crawly was careful to stick close to Aziraphale the second time around in the museum. He hadn’t thought before about what he would do without the angel. He didn’t know how to get around on Earth, he barely had any friends, and his phone could only answer the most basic questions. Crawly couldn’t do anything by himself. He was completely helpless.

Crowley couldn’t have been this high-maintenance. Crowley knew how to drive, and walk in heels without help, and cook meals for himself and Aziraphale. But Crowley wasn’t here, and the angel was stuck with Crawly instead, so Aziraphale had to be the one to do all the work while Crawly did nothing but cause problems. Why couldn’t Crawly have just been better at things?

He tried not to think about that. Aziraphale always seemed to be able to tell when he was worked up, and then that forehead crease would come back, and Crawly couldn’t have that. Not when Aziraphale looked so content browsing the paintings, and they finally managed to hunt down the Vermeers and the angel just stood there and looked at them for nearly half an hour. His eyes shone as he took in every detail, and every so often he turned to Crawly to make a comment about how nicely the light was captured here, and look at the sense of movement in this one, and weren’t those colors just splendid?

Crawly agreed with everything, of course, though his participation was hardly necessary. The angel was having a good time, and Crawly didn’t want to interrupt that. He couldn’t be Crowley, he would never be Crowley, but he could at least stand back and stay out of the way while Aziraphale enjoyed the museum. And if he found himself looking at the angel more than any of the paintings, that was nobody’s business.

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale said, jumping, when one of the humans in suits came over to remind them of the time. “Is it closing time already?” He shot a half-accusing look at Crawly. “I told you to drag me away if I took too long.”

“Yeah, well, how was I gonna do that?” Crawly protested. “When you’re all…with…your face.” He gestured vaguely at Aziraphale without looking at him, and hoped he wouldn’t have to rephrase that sentence in an actually coherent way.

“Well, we have to leave now, at any rate,” said Aziraphale. “Perhaps we can still catch the sunset at the Basilica.”

They found their way out of the maze, and Aziraphale hailed a taxi, and Crawly got into it and sat very still on the other side of the backseat. He never should have come to Paris. He needed to get a grip. Aziraphale was an angel, and a married angel, as if he could possibly be any further out of Crawly’s reach. This ridiculous fantasy he was living would all come down on his head sooner or later, and when it did, Aziraphale would hate him. He already hated himself just thinking about it. He’d always been unforgivable, but this was something different.

The taxi dropped them off, and they got onto something like the train, but smaller, and a great deal slower, which carried them up a hill. Crawly looked out the window without really seeing any of it. How had any of this happened? This was all such a terrible idea. Pretend to be his husband? How could that possibly have gone well?

Aziraphale waved for Crawly to follow him through the crowds. “Over here, look.”

Crawly raised his head and looked. They had reached the top of the hill, and the whole city was spread out below them. The buildings were little blocks strewn across a floor, with channels running through them where the streets were. In the distance, that pointy metal thing that had been in all the photos online rose above the surrounding little blocks. The setting sun bathed the whole scene in rosy light, and the sky was streaked with colors so vibrant they hurt Crawly’s eyes.

“Well.” The angel’s eyes were a little misty as he looked out at it all. “This is certainly something.”

The sunset-light was on the angel’s face as well. It made his eyes sparkle even brighter than usual, and turned his hair to spun gold.

“This has been a much better trip than the last one,” said Aziraphale. “Of course, I enjoyed that one, too, after you showed up. I always treasure our time together.”

Crawly shouldn’t have come to Paris. He wasn’t Crowley, he should be here, he shouldn’t be listening to Aziraphale say these things and pretending that they were about him. He shouldn’t—

“Thank you for this, dearest,” said Aziraphale, turning to look at him. “I—Oh. Oh, Crowley, what’s wrong?”

Tears rolled down Crawly’s cheeks, much as he tried to hold them in. He clutched the railing in front of himself. He didn’t know how to answer Aziraphale’s question. There was no good way to say _I’m not your husband, but I think I’m falling in love with you anyway._

“My dear.” Aziraphale’s voice was unbearably tender. He reached out to wipe away the tears rolling down Crawly’s cheeks.

Crawly jerked away. “Don’t,” he gasped. He took a few steps backwards, trying to withdraw, as if it wasn’t already much too late for that. “M’sorry,” he choked. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t—I’m so sorry—”

Aziraphale’s eyes filled with terrible concern. “What do you mean?”

Crawly could feel the words like bile in his throat. Everything was going to break when he said them, but he couldn’t do anything else anymore. He couldn’t keep lying to Aziraphale. “I’m not—I’m not Crowley,” he said, and it felt like ripping out something inside himself. “I don’t even know who that is. I’m—Sorry—”

Aziraphale’s face went blank with shock. He stared at Crawly, not understanding.

“I don’t know how I got here,” said Crawly, the words tumbling out in a panic now. “Downstairs sent me up to cause trouble, and I must’ve fallen into a parallel universe, or something, I don’t know. Didn’t mean to, honest, but then you mistook me for Crowley—I tried to find him, I did, but I don’t know where he is, and I—I can’t—”

Aziraphale shook his head and stepped forward. “No. No, Crowley—”

He recoiled from the name. “I’m not—”

“ _Crawly_.”

He froze.

“Oh—no, I’m sorry,” said Aziraphale hurriedly. “I only thought—If you didn’t remember being called Crowley—”

“How do you know my name?” Crawly asked in a hoarse voice. He hadn’t told Aziraphale his name yet.

Aziraphale looked at him for a moment, then cleared his throat. “Why, I…I remember when you called yourself that. That was such a long time ago. I knew you might have forgotten some things, but I never thought…”

Crawly didn’t understand. He stared at Aziraphale and didn’t move.

“You thought, all this time, that you were someone else?” said Aziraphale. “That I mistook you for…My dear, I’ve known you for six thousand years. I would know you anywhere, even if you didn’t know yourself.”

Crawly didn’t know what to say. None of this was making sense to him. “I…I only just met you a week ago.”

“No.” Aziraphale shook his head. “I think you’ve just forgotten.” He sighed. “You’ve forgotten a great deal, it seems. Oh, my dear.”

Crawly’s breath was shallow. But, no, Crowley was some other demon, who had strange taste in clothes and cut his hair short and knew how to do all sorts of things that Crawly didn’t. Crowley had somehow made an angel fall in love with him, and he was the luckiest bastard in creation, and… “I’m…I’m Crowley?”

The angel nodded. “Yes. By whatever name you choose, of course.”

Crawly’s hands trembled. This was all so impossible. All the things Aziraphale had said to him over the past week, all the little touches, the worry for his sake, the smiles that warmed his whole being… “You love _me?_ ”

Aziraphale’s face broke into one of those smiles now, dazzlingly bright in the sunset. “Yes. Oh my goodness, yes.”

Crawly felt like he might break. He wasn’t made to hold this much of anything, and he didn’t know what to do with it all. He started crying harder than before, his whole body shaking, his face probably hideously contorted…

And then soft arms wrapped around him, and he was pressed against a velvet waistcoat. “It’s alright, darling,” Aziraphale said softly. “I’ve got you. I love you so, so much, dear.”

That only made Crawly cry more. Nobody had ever—It was really all for him?

“By, Crow—Crawly,” said Aziraphale. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Was gonna—find Crowley,” he gasped between sobs. “Was gonna bring ‘im back to you. You love him so much—I didn’t want you t’ know he’d gone—”

“Of course you didn’t.” Aziraphale’s hand started to run up and down Crawly’s back. “You’ve always tried so hard to make me happy.”

Crawly was utterly useless now. He couldn’t do anything except stand there and sob into Azirphale’s shirt. He could barely even stand.

“You’re so good to me, dearest,” said Aziraphale. “You always have been.”

Crawly wanted to protest, but he couldn’t speak anymore. He just stood there and fell apart in the arms of this angel who, impossibly and completely unexpectedly, loved him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (They skipped the Mona Lisa because they have the Mona Lisa at home)


	8. And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay I know people have been asking what happened to Crawly's memory, and we're going to get there, but first these two deserve a chapter of the sappiest fluff I am capable of producing.

Trees rustled behind them in the light breeze. The sky was dark now, and the moon shone silver both in the sky and in the ruffled surface of the Seine. Aziraphale held Crawly close to him on the grass in the tucked-away spot he had miracled them to. The demon had wept into his shirt for hours while Aziraphale stroked his back and told him over and over again how wonderful he was, and how precious, and how loved, and made sure to throw in a “Crawly” every now and again so the demon knew he was talking to him. He’d spent the last week thinking that nobody loved him, and Aziraphale needed to set the record straight.

Crawly had calmed down now, or just tired himself out. Either way, he had stopped crying. It would take him a while to adjust, but Aziraphale would help him where he could. If he had understood the problem, he would have acted much sooner. No wonder the demon had been acting so odd. He thought he had woken up in a stranger’s house, in a stranger’s life, and was trying to pretend like he knew what he was doing in it.

Now that Crawly was quiet, Aziraphale thought about everything he had lost. There was so much. He must have forgotten all of his time on Earth, and all the things he liked here. He’d forgotten cars, and the comedies of Shakespeare, and the music of Queen. He didn’t even remember having a friend. What could they do about that? Was there anything they could do? Aziraphale didn’t even know what had happened to his memory in the first place.

Well, whatever happened, whether this was temporary or permanent, he would be there with Crawly. They would figure it out. They always did.

The demon stirred in his arms, and he looked down. “Feeling better, my dear?”

“Mn,” muttered Crawly. “Lot better.”

“That’s good.”

There was a pause. “Appreciate it if you didn’t mention that little episode to anyone,” said Crawly. “Demon, and all. Got a reputation to uphold.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of tarnishing your reputation.” Neither of them mentioned that Aziraphale was still holding Crawly, and Crawly was letting him. “What would you like me to call you, dearest?”

“Ghk,” said the demon. “That—that’s fine.”

“What is?”

“That, what you just, um…”

Aziraphale chuckled. “I mean names, my dear.”

“Oh. Right. Names.” He ducked a little lower, embarrassed. “Uh…Crowley’s, er, it’s alright, but maybe later. Getting used to, uh, a lot of other things right now.”

“Of course.” It would be a lot, Aziraphale thought, to have to adjust to a new name on top of everything else, particularly when he had spent the past several days thinking that name belonged to someone else. “Crawly,” Aziraphale asked, “how did this happen?”

“Wh, if I—If I _remembered_ , don’t you think I’d have—?”

“Right.” Aziraphale shook his head hurriedly. “Yes, of course, you’re right. Silly question.”

He wanted to ask more, to find out when it had started and how much, exactly, Crawly did remember, but this didn’t seem like the time for such an interrogation. Everything was still fresh, and Crawly was struggling to come to terms with it, and Aziraphale wanted to make that as easy for him as he could. It should be Crawly’s turn to speak first, if he wanted to.

Crawly moved again, shifting his position slightly to be more comfortable, but his face was still buried in Aziraphale’s shirt. “So, um,” he said in a hoarse voice. “What do we do now?”

Aziraphale wasn’t sure how to answer that, either. The demon had asked him something similar after the failed Armageddon, and back then, both of their answers had been that they wanted to spend as much time together as possible. Aziraphale’s answer hadn’t changed, but he didn’t know about Crawly.

It was a good thing Crawly couldn’t see his face. He couldn’t be too disappointed if Crawly didn’t want to continue living with him. Crawly had just gotten here, from his perspective, and as much as he seemed to enjoy being held like this, Aziraphale was a near-stranger to him. If he wanted to see more of Earth, Aziraphale would understand. It wouldn’t be easy, but he would have to understand. Cautiously, he asked, “What would you like to do?”

Crawly didn’t answer for a moment. Aziraphale thought he might not have heard. Then he said, “I like being your husband. If I could keep, um. Doing that.”

“Of course.” Aziraphale smiled and squeezed Crawly gently. “I’d hoped you would.” He reached up and brushed his fingers through Crawly’s soft hair, and the demon shuddered and relaxed into him. He liked to put up a front, but he had always craved affection, and Aziraphale guessed that would be even more true now, when he didn’t remember ever receiving any. He started to rub Crawly’s back again and then paused. “My dear,” he asked with a touch of amusement, “I ought to have asked this sooner, but are you still, ahem, molting?”

A laugh burst unexpectedly from Crawly. “Nn. My human form doesn’t molt.”

“That’s a relief,” said Aziraphale, and bent down to kiss Crawly’s head. He made a sound like a whimper, and Aziraphale pulled back. “Too much?”

“Nuh, it’s, ngh—” Crawly stuttered. “—I mean, sort of a lot—”

Aziraphale patted him on the back. Perhaps they would work up to it. For now, it would be enough if Crawly understood that he was loved.

“What happened last time?” Crawly asked.

“Hm?”

“Last time, in Paris.”

Aziraphale gave a little laugh. He had imagined that Crawly would have a lot of questions for him, but he wouldn’t have put that one at the top of the list. “I’m afraid I got myself into trouble. I had a monstrous craving for crepes, so I crossed the channel and promptly got myself thrown in the Bastille.”

Crawly didn’t react. “Bastille?”

He had forgotten all his time on Earth, Aziraphale reminded himself. There would be quite a few names and words he would need to re-learn. “It was a prison. You know what that is, yes?”

“Yeah. Lot of those in hell.”

Aziraphale nodded. “There was a revolution happening. Do you know ‘revolution’?”

Crawly looked up. Aziraphale had taken his sunglasses to make sure he didn’t damage them, and his demonic eyes were bare. “Do I know ‘revolution’?” he said in a deadpan.

Aziraphale blinked. “Yes, of—of course. Silly question.”

“I was only there when it was invented, angel.” He pointed at his slitted snake-eyes. “I got a nice souvenir.”

“ _Alright._ Anyway, they were having one in France at the time…”

He told the rest of the story, and of course Crawly called him absurd, and said he should have left Aziraphale to the paperwork just to teach him a lesson, and Aziraphale laughed, and Crawly insisted that he was being serious while obviously holding back laughter of his own. Then Aziraphale told him more stories, more things he had missed, scattered here and there throughout history. At some point he decided he had better start at the beginning and went all the way back to the garden, and tried to keep his retellings chronological, and mostly failed. And Crawly, ever the same, interrupted him the whole time with questions and snide comments and the occasional joke. That was him, there was no mistaking it. That was the demon Aziraphale had fallen in love with. As he’d said, he would know him anywhere.

They talked until the sun came up, and kept talking, and lost track of time. Before they knew it, it was evening again, and the sun was dipping low. “Oh, dear,” said Aziraphale, letting go of Crawly quite suddenly and jumping to his feet. “I believe we’ve missed our train.”

Crawly fell over onto the grass. “Oh.”

“Sorry—Sorry, dear,” said Aziraphale. “I suppose it’s not really a problem for us, but it does add the extra inconvenience of getting more tickets. Oh, and our bags are still at the hotel. The concierge is probably wondering why we never came to pick them up.” He sighed. “He’s probably wondering why we never even checked in.”

“Satan’s sake, calm down,” said Crawly. “Are you always so fussy?”

“You should know by now that I am.” Aziraphale looked down to straighten his shirt and waistcoat. They were quite wrinkled, thanks to having a demon smushed against them for the last twenty-four hours, but he managed to convince them that they were newly-pressed. “Well,” he said, looking up at Crawly, “are you ready to go home?”

Some very strong emotion flickered through Crawly’s eyes. “Home,” he said, his voice thick. “Y-yeah.”

Aziraphale took his hand to help him to his feet, and then laced their fingers together as they walked back through the park. He had no idea where in the city they had ended up, but they managed to hail a cab to take them back to the train station, and Aziraphale miracled the ticket machines to spit out two tickets while nobody else was looking. “The next train is half an hour from now,” he said, returning to Crawly, who was watching the trains roll into and out of the station. He was frowning, and looked deep in thought about something. Was he having doubts? Surely he hadn’t changed his mind? Aziraphale cleared his throat. “Crawly?”

The demon looked at him, then glanced around and lowered his voice. “How do they do that?” he said, pointing discretely at the trains.

Aziraphale stifled a chuckle. Crawly was just fine. “I don’t know how well I’ll be able to explain how an engine works, but I’ll do my best,” he said. “Come along. I believe we have just enough time to find some éclairs before we need to board.”

It took a long while for Crawly to start acting normal again. For days after returning from Paris, he walked around in a sort of stunned daze, and his whole brain seemed to shut down sometimes when Aziraphale was affectionate with him. It wasn’t that he didn’t want this life—he obviously did—but he needed some convincing before he accepted that it was actually his. More to the point, Aziraphale needed to convince him that he deserved it, which was difficult when all he remembered were heaven, which had thrown him out, and hell, which was hell. Crawly still cracked jokes every so often, but not with his usual frequency. At times, when it was all just too much for him, he would go outside to sit in the car for a little while. Or a longer while.

Aziraphale worried, at first, that something else might be bothering Crawly. When he finally got up the courage to bring it up, Crawly said, “well, she’s such a fantastic singer,” and Aziraphale thought for a moment and then explained to him that he could listen to the same music from his phone or computer. Crawly spent more time inside after that. He also started blaring Queen through the cottage every so often, and Aziraphale had to teach him about headphones as well.

He had a great deal of things to learn about Earth, actually. He took a very long time to warm up to pants, even after Aziraphale assured him that not all of them were as tight as the ones he used to prefer, and it was over a week before he finally admitted that he didn’t know how to read. When he tried learning to drive, he nearly killed several of their neighbors (which wasn’t that different from his usual driving, actually) and had to miracle a mailbox back together (which was new), and all his attempts at cooking ended in disaster. On one memorable occasion, Aziraphale found himself standing in the kitchen, with the smoke alarm blaring, looking up at the ceiling and asking, “How did it get there?”

Crawly shrugged, his shoulders tense. One of his hands was bleeding.

“Let me see that, my dear,” Aziraphale said, and healed the cut with a miracle when Crawly reluctantly held out his hand. “I’ll clean up in here,” said Aziraphale, eager to get Crawly out of the kitchen. “We can order delivery tonight. Perhaps that Thai place.”

He scrubbed whatever Crawly had been trying to cook off of the counter and out of the stovetop, mopped up the mess on the floor, and sighed up at the ceiling stain for a moment before giving up and fixing it with a miracle. He’d never thought he would be the one cleaning up after Crawly’s cooking. It wasn’t that long ago that Aziraphale was trying to teach himself how to cook, and the demon had to watch over his shoulder to make sure he didn’t burn himself. Aziraphale chuckled. It was an odd role-reversal they found themselves in. Crawly had taught him a little about all his favorite things, and now he knew more about most of them than Crawly did.

Crawly waved his phone at Aziraphale when he went back into the sitting room. “Food’ll be here soon.”

“Oh,” said Aziraphale, pleasantly surprised. He had intended to order dinner himself once he finished in the kitchen. “You didn’t have to—”

“Yeah, well, too late,” Crawly interrupted. “It’s already on the way.”

They were halfway through eating when Crawly asked, “How is it?”

“Good,” said Aziraphale. “How’s yours?”

The demon looked at him for a moment. “It’s the wrong Thai place, isn’t it?”

“Well, it’s not…it’s not our usual, but I do like this peanut sauce. It has just the right tang.”

Crawly didn’t look convinced. He turned back to his food. “It’s the wrong Thai place,” he muttered. “Sorry. Shouldn’t’ve bothered.”

Crawly didn’t seem to find the situation as amusing as Aziraphale did. It must be terribly embarrassing, Aziraphale thought to himself as Crawly slept that night, to suddenly forget how to do everything you once prided yourself on. It was hardly Crawly’s fault, of course, but Aziraphale knew that wouldn’t do much to heal his pride. He must know that Aziraphale didn’t care, and loved him regardless. Aziraphale had been careful not to laugh at the questions Crawly asked, and he was always willing to help him with anything he needed, but maybe that wasn’t enough. Back when he remembered, Crawly had always liked doing things for Aziraphale, but now there wasn’t much he could do that Aziraphale couldn’t do better.

He thought about it for a while. Then, he got out of bed and went to the computer. He did some internet searches, placed some orders, and then got back in bed. He hoped this was a good idea.

The package arrived some days later. Crawly examined the large box curiously, flipping it around to look at both sides. “What’s this?”

“Careful with that,” said Aziraphale, taking it from him. “It’s a surprise.”

“I’m surprised,” said Crawly. “Look.” He took off his glasses and opened his eyes wide in feigned shock.

“Have a little patience, my dear,” Aziraphale sighed. He took the package and hid it in the closet.

He hadn’t hidden it very well, because an hour later, he found Crawly sitting on the floor with the open box next to him, trying to work out what to do with the big tube and folding contraption that had been inside. “Crawly,” Aziraphale scolded him.

“I’m still surprised,” said Crawly. “Be even more surprised if I knew what it was, though.”

Aziraphale fidgeted with his hands. “It’s…it’s a telescope. You look through it and it magnifies what you see. Humans use them to look at the stars and planets. I thought—I thought perhaps we could try it out in the backyard tonight.”

Crawly stared at him. He couldn’t tell if that was a good or bad reaction.

“If you want to,” he added hurriedly. “I know it was a long time ago, it’s just, you always seemed so proud of them, and we never got a chance to—That is, I’ve always wanted to see the ones you made. You could—you could tell me all about them.”

Crawly looked back down at the telescope, but not before Aziraphale caught a glimpse of wetness in his eyes. Oh dear, he should have known this was a bad idea. Crawly rarely talked about his time as an angel. He had only mentioned the stars on a few occasions, usually after a drink or three.

“I can still send it back,” he said, wringing his hands. “Perhaps I ought to have run the idea past you before I bought the damn thing. I only thought …”

“Dammit, angel,” said Crawly, his voice breaking. “I love you.”

Aziraphale’s heart stopped for a moment. He stared down at Crawly. “You—what?”

“Oh,” said Crawly, like he hadn’t realized what he’d said until he’d said it. “Yeah.”

Aziraphale had said it to Crawly countless times since he’d lost his memory, but the demon hadn’t said it back since the truth had come out in Paris. Aziraphale hadn’t been expecting him to say it back, and certainly not so soon. “Already?”

“ _Already?_ ” Crawly repeated, looking up with a flash of annoyance. “What do you—Bit full of yourself, aren’t you? Bloody ‘already.’”

Aziraphale beamed. “Well, I knew you would eventually.”

“Oh—Oh!” Crawly sputtered. “ _Eventually_. Sorry, did I throw off your timetable? You gonna have to push some stuff up now? Reschedule, I dunno, the proposal? Oh, wait.”

Laughing, Aziraphale slid to the floor, set the telescope aside, and wrapped Crawly in a hug. “Would you like me to propose again?” he asked. “Since you missed the first one?”

“Would I—No! What would be the point?”

“Well, for one,” Aziraphale said, “I’d get to tell you how very much I love you.”

“You do that all the time,” said Crawly, though the sarcasm was undercut by the emotion in his voice. “Bloody—What’s that thing you said the other day—broken record, that’s what you are.”

“Do you think so? Then perhaps I should stop saying it.”

Crawly pulled back and looked so appalled that Aziraphale had to laugh. “Oh, you bastard,” said Crawly, scowling. “You and your _Already_.”

“Well, it was only a matter of time.”

“Are you listening to yourself right now?”

Aziraphale kissed him on the cheek, which shut him up. “Is that a yes to the telescope, then?”

“Ghhg—Yeh. Yeah. Be fun.”

It would be fun. They always had fun together. “I look forward to it, then. Aziraphale couldn’t stop smiling. Crawly loved him again, and even sooner than he’d hoped. They would make this work, after all.

Crawly fiddled around with the dials and levers on the telescope, squinting through the lens with one eye as he tried to position it. “Right,” he said, looking up into the sky. “There we go. That’s one of my first ones. Take a look.”

Aziraphale peered through the telescope with an appreciative hum. “It’s lovely.”

“Yeah, not really,” Crawly admitted. “S’a bit wonky on the left side, where I dropped it. It rolled into the records department and made a big mess. Had one hell of a time getting it back out.”

“That was you?” Aziraphale pulled his head back from the telescope to look at Crawly. “I remember that. Gabriel was furious.”

“Was he?” said Crawly, proudly. “Serves him right, the git. Should have rolled a few more in that direction.”

Aziraphale chuckled and put his face back to the telescope. Crawly realized that he was smiling, too, and for once he let himself. This was fun. He hadn’t known there was still something that he knew and Aziraphale didn’t, and which he could share with him. The teaching-and-learning thing hadn’t been at all balanced between them, and while Crawly appreciated everything Aziraphale did for him, it got a little humiliating to be the one constantly in the dark. And the angel just _knew,_ didn’t he, and even though he couldn’t fix it he had made it a little better. He always knew. How did he do that?

Crawly wished he could do the same for him. He wanted to know Aziraphale as well as Aziraphale knew him, he wanted to cook for him and drive him places and do all the things he used to, when he still remembered how to do them. And yes, Earth was a different sort of place, where he could learn and grow and get better at things, but he was so far behind.

“Which others are yours?” Aziraphale asked, turning back to him.

Crawly stepped up to adjust the telescope again. “Let me see if I can find another…Oh! Oh, this was one of my favorites.” He made some final adjustments and stepped back to let Aziraphale look. “You can’t tell from this far away, but there’s actually two of them there,” he said. “Blimey, they really stuck together all this time. I didn’t know that was gonna happen, but then, well, gravity.”

Aziraphale wasn’t smiling this time. “Oh,” he said, looking into the telescope. “Alpha Centuri.”

“Alpha what what?”

“That’s what the humans called it.” Aziraphale stepped back from the telescope, and for some reason he looked sad. “You, er…mentioned it to me, once or twice.”

“Don’t much care for the name,” Crawly muttered, still examining Aziraphale’s expression. He had never mentioned Alpha Centuri before, in all the time he had spent filling Crawly in on what he missed. Crawly wondered what context he had mentioned them in, and decided he’d rather not ask. “I just called them the friend stars, myself.”

Aziraphale gave a little cough of surprise. “The what?”

“Well, they’re…they’re friends _,_ see? There’s two of them there,” he said again, in case that hadn’t gotten across the first time. “Been six thousand years. Bloody inseperable, aren’t they?”

“They are, rather.” Aziraphale patted his arm. He looked sentimental for reasons Crawly didn’t understand. “And what else?”

“Uh…Lessee here…” Crawly looked up at the sky and stepped forward to adjust a telescope again. “Another one over there, let me see if I can get this set up right…”

Aziraphale watched him for a moment. “Crawly?”

“Hm?”

“Do you miss it?”

Crawly blinked at the question and looked up at the sky for a moment before answering. He had enjoyed making stars, sure. He had dreamed about starmaking several times once he started sleeping on Earth, whenever his nightmares inexplicably turned into something more pleasant. But not anymore. His dreams were different now. “Nah,” he said. “Got better things here now.”

Aziraphale smiled at him. “You sap.”

“I’m not!” he protested.

“You are,” said Aziraphale, grinning. “You’ve always been.”

“That’s a dirty lie. I’m a _demon._ ” Crawly hissed to emphasize his point, but suspected it was less intimidating than what he was going for.

“I love you,” said Aziraphale, with no warning.

Crawly started to tear up like he always did when Aziraphale said it, and had to look away and pull himself together. “That’s not fair,” he protested.

“See?” said Aziraphale, with that cheeky grin he sometimes got when he decided to be particularly insufferable. “Sap.”

“Bastard.” Crawly tried to scowl. He couldn’t manage it. “I love you, too.”


	9. Same as it ever was

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it, folks! I know I've said it before, but with every new chapter I continue to be absolutely blown away by the response. I never expected this many people to read this little piece of nonsense and I certainly never expected this many people to comment on each new addition. Every comment means so much to me, and my day brightens a little bit every time I get that notification email. Thank you all so much for letting me entertain you with this silly story about an amnesiac dumbass and his husband! I wish you all the best! <3

Crawly was lounging on the couch watching videos on his phone when Youtube autoplay happened to land on a recipe for pasta carbonara, and he bolted upright. “Angel. They make recipes in video form?”

Next to him, Aziraphale looked up from his book. “Yes, I suppose there’s all sorts of things on the internet.”

“Why the heaven did you never tell me that?” The most frustrating part about trying to cook had always been reading the recipe. He either had to ask Aziraphale to read it to him, or he had to depend on the robotic screen reader and try to decipher the instructions himself. The latter approach usually involved a lot of looking up other words, getting impatient, and then just winging it with catastrophic results. The former usually lead to a “Why don’t I take care of this, my dear,” as Aziraphale gently but firmly ushered him out of the kitchen. Sure, Aziraphale could cook better than Crawly, but that wasn’t the point.

But if there were videos? That was a game-changer. He rewound the pasta recipe and watched, fascinated, as the chef talked through each step, demonstrated her techniques, and even shared tips for getting it to come out right. Oh, this was so much easier to follow. He could handle this. Maybe he could even cook without supervision. He could…

A grin spread across his face. He could surprise Aziraphale.

He threw off the blanket and scrambled to his feet. “I’m going to make something.”

Aziraphale stared at him in dread.

“It’s going to work this time,” Crawly insisted.

The angel still looked doubtful. “What are you going to make?”

“You’ll have to wait and see, won’t you?” he said mysteriously. “Stay out of the kitchen for a bit, m’kay? Actually, why don’t you go read on the back porch for a bit? Otherwise you’d smell it cooking and ruin the surprise.”

“I suppose, if you insist,” Aziraphale agreed somewhat reluctantly, marking the page in his book and getting to his feet. “Let me know if you need help.”

“I won’t,” he called back as he went into the kitchen. He could do this. Sure, he had made a spectacular mess of cooking before, but he hadn’t had a professional showing him how to do it. He shuffled through the recommended videos until he found one he wanted to try. Aziraphale always had a sweet tooth, didn’t he? This should be perfect.

He watched the video from start to end, and when he looked in the fridge for the ingredients, he found it miraculously stocked with everything the recipe required. He watched it again, carrying his phone with one hand while he pulled out all the ingredients and equipment with the other. Then he started it from the beginning and leaned it against the flour canister to free up his hands. It was time to try this out for himself.

“Today, we’re going to be making a six-ingredient chocolate mousse,” the chef began.

“Mousse,” Crawly echoed. Wasn’t that an animal, too? Nah, that didn’t make sense. Must be thinking of something else. Well, it was a fun word. “ _Mousse_.”

“First, we’re going to cut up some chocolate.” The chef demonstrated. Crawly paused the video and imitated her, chopping up the chocolate bar into little pieces. Next, the chef constructed a double boiler to melt the chocolate. That was going to take a little more time. Crawly put the water on to simmer and moved on to the eggs.

Eggs were tricky. None of the recipes he’d tried had specified that you were only supposed to use the inside part, and he had quickly learned that “beat two eggs” didn’t mean what it sounded like it meant. He’d gotten the hang of cracking them open, but separating the whites and the yolks looked like it would take some more practice.

He managed it successfully on his second try. Grinning, he dumped the yolk into the designated yolk bowl, then cracked another egg and did it again.

The doorbell rang. His concentration broke, and he got yolk all over the whites. “Could you get that, Aziraphale?” he called, dumping out the failure and trying again.

The doorbell rang again a moment later. Right, he had told Aziraphale to go outside. Crawly miracled the egg from his hands, went to the door, and opened it, wondering who had decided to pay them a visit.

It was Hastur.

Crawly closed the door. “Angel?” he yelled, a moment before the entire door was blown halfway across the room, and Crawly with it. He picked himself up and climbed over the bits of door, muttering, “Why’d you even ring the bell, then.”

Hastur stepped inside, a nasty smile on his lips. He shouldn’t be here, in the sitting room of his and Aziraphale’s little cottage. It was all wrong. There was Aziraphale’s stack of books on the side table with the little tasseled bookmarks all dangling out of the sides, and there were the crocheted throw pillows Crawly lounged all over when he felt like being a nuisance and taking up the whole sofa, and then there was Hastur, Duke of hell, stinking like a sewer full of corpses. Any second now, he’d greet Crawly by his old name, and Crawly would have to stand and watch while all of this crumbled around him: the sofa, the half-finished mousse, Aziraphale…

“Hello, Crowley,” Hastur sneered.

In spite of himself, Crawly grinned in relief. Even Hastur knew he belonged here. “Wassup, Hastur. Good of you to stop by.”

“It’s not.” Hastur continued to step forward slowly, menacingly.

Crawly backed away. Considering what Aziraphale had told him about his break with his former employer, he guessed that this was not a social call. “Can I interest you in a, uh, cup of tea?” he said anyway. It wouldn’t hurt to try.

Hastur ignored him. “I hear Lord Beelzebub sent someone down to wipe your memories.”

Oh, was that what had happened? That made sense. A lot of sense, actually. “So no tea?” said Crawly, circling behind the coffee table. “What about some coffee, then?”

Hastur flipped the table out of the way. A bowl of potpourri fell off and scattered all over the rug. “The way I see it, you got off much too easy.”

Crawly was getting dangerously close to being backed against the wall. He was running out of beverages to offer Hastur. Now would probably be a good time to think of a plan. “You can’t kill me,” he said as flippantly as he could. “You don’t know how.”

“No,” said Hastur. “What I’m going to do to you will hurt a lot more.”

That definitely didn’t sound good. Crawly edged to the left and looked for some sort of weapon. He should have gone to the right. There was a whole kitchen full of knives in that direction.

“You’re going to pay for what you’ve done, Crowley,” Hastur snarled. “You and your angel _best friend._ ” The words dripped with disdain.

“Is that what you think we are?” Crawly glanced behind himself to make sure Aziraphale was safe. He couldn’t see the angel’s curly white head through the window. Had he moved? Crawly hoped so. Otherwise, he’d be leading Hastur directly to him. still didn’t know how he was going to get away himself. Dammit, he needed to _think_ —

“Why—why d’you say it like that?” Crawly asked. Hastur had never been a big talker, but maybe he could stall for a few extra seconds. “Thought you’d get it. You’ve got a best friend, right? Always seemed like you and Ligur—”

Hastur interrupted him with a scream, picked up a nearby lamp, and threw it at him. “Don’t talk about Ligur!” he shrieked.

Crawly, dodged the lamp. They must have had a falling out. “Sure. Noted.”

Hastur raised a shaking finger to point at Crawly. “You deserve to live in agony after what you did to him.”

After what he—? Aziraphale hadn’t mentioned this. Crawly’s back was pressed against the window. He literally had nowhere else to go. “Right, uh,” he said, his heart pounding, his mind racing, his eyes darting around for something, anything that would help—

Aziraphale was looking in through the hole where the door used to be.

“Stay right there!” Crawly shouted, holding up a hand. The last thing he needed was for Aziraphale to get hurt, too. And then, finally, he had an idea. Drawing a quick breath, he snapped his fingers, and his sunglasses appeared over his eyes, hiding where he had been looking a moment ago. “Stay right there, Hastur,” he said, in a calmer tone. “You’re about to make a big mistake.”

Hastur scowled at him. “We’re inside, you bastard. You don’t even need those.”

“You’re here for revenge, is that it?” said Crawly. “Look, I don’t even know what this is about. Memory wipe, and all that. So don’t—don’t—What are you doing?”

Aziraphale had crept inside, in spite of Crawly’s warning, and was tiptoeing over to the kitchen door. He made a shushing gesture and then waved for him to carry on with what he was doing, as if everything was just peachy.

Crawly frowned and looked back at Hastur. “Just one demon’s opinion, but how d’you plan on settling the score if I don’t even remember whatever it is that I’m supposed to have done? Can you even call that revenge?”

Hastur’s eyes narrowed. He was thinking about it.

“All I’m saying is—No, wait—”

Aziraphale had come out of the kitchen with a large and heavy wine bottle raised in his hand like a club. Crawly tried to motion for him to stop without Hastur seeing what he was doing. Aziraphale shot him an exasperated look and pointed at Hastur behind his back.

“I’m just saying, before you do anything, uh, rash,” said Crawly, hoping Aziraphale would get the message and hold off for just a moment, “it might be better if I actually, y’know, remembered everything.”

It would be so much better. Crawly wouldn’t have to ask about the inside jokes Aziraphale referenced sometimes, and which Crawly only half-understood once they were explained. He would be able to drive them to brunch and read the menu himself, and he wouldn’t have to look up half the ingredients. He could do all the things for Aziraphale that he’d once known how to do.

Aziraphale’s brow wrinkled, and then his eyes widened as he realized what Crawly was aiming for. Crawly gave the tiniest of nods. Aziraphale deserved a husband who actually remembered their time together.

“Hm,” said Hastur thoughtfully. “You may be right about that. I’ll be back, _Crowley._ ” He spat onto the rug, and his saliva ate a hole through the weave. Below Hastur’s feet, the rug tore open, the hardwood floor underneath cracked, and he sank back into hell.

Aziraphale sighed, looking down at the spot where he had disappeared. “That rug is absolutely ruined now. Crawly, what were you thinking?” he said, looking up. “That was terribly risky.”

“Well, you’re standing behind him with a heavy object,” Crawly pointed out. “So I figured, you’d back me up if he tried anything. Anyway, now that we know he’s coming, we can prepare for—”

The floor opened again, and Hastur rose back to the surface.

“Oh,” said Crawly, trying to back up and then remembering that he was already against the wall. “I really thought that would take longer.”

Hastur held up an odd black square. “Does this look familiar?” he asked with a smirk.

Crawly frowned. It did look familiar. But nothing else had survived the memory wipe, so he couldn’t be remembering something from before, could he? “Oh,” he realized, pointing at it. “It’s one of those save icons, isn’t it?”

“No.” Hastur stepped forward and pressed the square against Crawly’s forehead. The back of his head knocked against the wall, and then his vision filled with white and he screamed. Of course Hastur wasn’t going to make it painless. This was probably completely unnecessary. Crawly couldn’t say he was surprised, what with it being Hastur, and with the fact that Crawly had killed Ligur in front of him—

Uh. Wait a second. He hadn’t remembered that before.

Crawly’s vision cleared for just a second. Aziraphale was stepping up behind Hastur, raising the wine bottle. Crawly broke off just long enough to gasp, “Not yet,” before he started screaming again. If Crawly hadn’t actually experienced having the core of his being burned, that was probably what he’d compare it to. This wasn’t nearly that bad, but only because it was such a high bar to begin with.

The pain mercifully disappeared, and Crawly was on the floor, coughing and struggling to blink away the pounding in his head. Was that it? Was he done? It was difficult to take stock of his memories when his head felt like it was splitting open. He remembered an apple, snatches of song lyrics, that one tavern where he used to get blackout drunk in the fourteenth century, something about a thermos…That was important, wasn’t it? Why was it so important?

“Well?” Hastur demanded, looming over him. “Do you remember yet what you did to Ligur?”

Crawly coughed until he found his voice. “Sorry, who?”

Scowling, Hastur bent down and pressed the square—Floppy disk? They’d stored him on a _floppy disk?_ —against his head, and he couldn’t see anymore. His throat hurt even more than the rest of him, what with all the screaming, and it was hard to tell what was spottier, his mind or his memory. It was difficult to stay conscious. He dug around in his brain and found new thoughts and images that hadn’t been there before, a solo violin in a crowded concert hall, a searing pain in his feet, the color of the sun as it set over paradise, the way Aziraphale’s face looked after he ate a particularly good oyster… _You go too fast for me, Crowley,_ and oh, that was why it was important, but then the way he looked at Crowley after Armageddon, the look in his eyes when he first said _I love you…_

His vision cleared again, and his scream (he didn’t even remember starting to scream this time) petered out. “Well?” Hastur asked, his face shaking with barely-suppressed anger. “Before I end this, you will apologize. Do you remember yet what for?”

Crawly drew a few rasping breaths. “Sorry,” he rasped. “’kay, you can hit him now, angel.”

Hastur barely had time to look surprised before Aziraphale cracked the wine glass over his head and he slumped to the floor, unconscious. Aziraphale looked at the demon, swallowing anxiously. “Cr—Um—”

“Crowley.” He picked himself up off the floor, wincing, one hand on his head. Hastur really hadn’t held back. “Dunno why I ever thought Crawly was a suitable name. It’s not even a name. Just a verb with a _y_ at the end.”

Aziraphale’s face lit up. “You remember?”

“Yep,” Crowley said with a grin. Apart from the physical pain, his head felt much better now that six thousand years of history had been returned to it. Six thousand years of living on Earth, and learning, and getting to know Aziraphale. “I’m back now.”

Beaming, Aziraphale dropped the neck of the wine glass and ran to hug Crowley. “I’m so glad,” he said, squeezing the demon so tight he could barely breathe. “But, my dear, you never left. It was always you.”

Crowley would have made one of his signature incoherent noises, but he couldn’t get any air into his lungs at the moment. He patted Aziraphale on the back and tried to communicate that this was a little too tight.

“Oh dear—Sorry.” Aziraphale let go of him hurriedly and looked him over. “Are you alright? That whole process looked terribly unpleasant.”

“Really? What tipped you off?” said Crowley. “Was it the agonized screaming? You noticed that?”

“Hush, my dear.” Aziraphale placed a hand on Crowley’s forehead and closed his eyes, and a moment later the pain in his head was replaced with a soothing warmth. “Better?”

“Mm,” Crowley agreed. He hugged Aziraphale again, and the angel wrapped his arms around Crowley much more gently this time. “Thanks,” said Crowley. “For, y’know. Sticking with me when I was a useless idiot.”

“You were not,” Aziraphale insisted. “It was rather delightful to watch you learn to love Earth all over again.”

More than just Earth. Crowley couldn’t believe he had forgotten this. Aziraphale, the most important thing in his life, just—blip!—gone. Well, maybe not completely gone. It hadn’t taken long for Crowley to come back to him. “Pff. You just liked being able to reduce me to a blubbering mess every time you said something nice.”

He could hear the smirk in Aziraphale’s voice. “It was only a little easier than usual, my dear.”

“That’s not fair. I’m very cool.” Neither of those were true, and both of them knew it. “Bet it wasn’t ‘delightful’ watching me repeatedly destroy the kitchen. At least now I know you didn’t marry me just for my cooking.”

“Of course I didn’t—Crowley!”

Crowley stepped back, grinning. He had just learned how to do a lot of things very fast, and was eager to try some of them out. “So what d’you want to do now? We could go for a drive, walk down to that café you like, or I can—” With a start, he remembered the mousse. “Hang on, I let the stove on—”

Aziraphale cleared his throat. “Don’t you think we ought to do something about the unconscious demon on the floor?”

Crowley turned, and they both looked at Hastur for a moment. “Anathema might have a demon banishing ritual we could use,” suggested Aziraphale.

Even if they banished him back to hell, Crowley had a feeling that Hastur would only come back to bother them again. They would need to get rid of him for good, but Crowley didn’t really want to douse him in holy water, if they could help it. He had a feeling Aziraphale didn’t, either.

“Or…I suppose there’s always discorporation,” said Aziraphale reluctantly.

“Nah.” Crowley didn’t particularly want to do that, either. He bent down to pick up the floppy disk. The label on it read, _Crowley’s memories, 4004 B.C. – 2025 A.D.,_ in a hand much too neat to be Hastur’s. He must have stolen it from Dagon’s files. He never could have gotten it so fast through legitimate channels. Plus, he seemed to have come to Earth entirely on his own, without orders. A demon could get in a lot of trouble for going rogue like that.

“Actually, the banishing ritual isn’t a bad idea.” With a snap, Crawly summoned a ballpoint pen and a stack of sticky notes. “We’ll send him back with a message.”

Beelzebub had barely sat down and slumped forward against their desk when someone knocked on their office door. “What is it now?” they snapped, raising their head to glare at Legion.

“It’s Duke Hastur, your disgrace,” said Legion, looking terrified, as always. “We found him, and it appears…Maybe you should see for yourself.”

Beelzebub rubbed their eyes. “Fine. Send him in.”

Hastur entered a moment later, looking disoriented. There was a yellow sticky note on his forehead that said “I went to Earth against orders and tried to restore Crowley’s memories” with a frowny face in the lower right corner.

Beelzebub sighed. “Hastur, did you go to Earth against orderzzz and try to restore Crowley’s memories?”

Hastur blinked in surprise, then forced an unconvincing smile. “N-no, Lord Beelzebub of course not.”

Beelzebub treated him to a flat, emotionless stare.

“Yes, I did,” Hastur admitted. “But only because—”

“The traitor is to be left alone, unless I give express orders otherwise,” said Beelzebub, their voice rising. “Was I not clear about that, Hastur?”

“No, you were—you were very clear.”

“And yet you still tried to return his memoriezzz. How? Where did you find them?”

“D-Dagon’s backup files.” Hastur reached into his coat pocket, frowned, tried the other pocket, and pulled out a black floppy disk.

Beelzebub held out a hand impatiently, and Hastur stepped forward to give them the disk. They snatched it away. Dagon and her backups. They had known nothing good would come of leaving the traitor’s memories lying around like, but Dagon insisted. _Just in case_ , she had said. _What if we need to interrogate him?_ Never mind that their original plan was to kill him, and nobody had mentioned possible interrogation then.

Beelzebub snapped the disk in half. “You would have undone all my hard work getting up there and wiping them in the firzzzt place,” they said, glowering up at Hastur. “Perhaps you’re turning traitor as well?”

“N-no, Lord Beelzebub, never.”

Beelzebub waved at Legion. “Put the Duke under close supervision from now on. And Hastur, if I catch you trying to sneak away again, I’ll find someone more reliable to rule your dukedom, and you’ll be scrubbing saliva off the walls for the rest of eternity. Got that?”

“Understood, Lord Beelzebub,” said Hastur, looking down. “Er…Out of curiosity, what would happen if I had gone through with restoring the traitor’s memories?”

Beelzebub scowled. The fluorescent lighting in the room flickered at a longer frequency than usual. “First I’d have you drawn and quartered,” they said. “Then I’d throw the pieces to the hellhounds, and if there was anything left when they were done with you, I’d dunk the remains in acid. Just for a start.”

Hastur gave an uneasy smile. “It’s, ah, a good thing I didn’t, then.”

“Get him out of here,” Beelzebub told Legion, flicking their wrist dismissively. “And do not disturb me again.”

“Yes, your disgrace.”

The door closed, and Beelzebub leaned their head against the table again. Thank Satan that fool hadn’t actually foiled their plan. It had been ingenious, if they did say so themself. They didn’t know how to hurt the traitor, but he couldn’t bother them if he didn’t remember betraying hell. Beelzebub had overseen the wipe themself, and it had been thorough. Crowley didn’t even remember that rogue angel anymore. He was probably wandering around Earth at this very moment, wondering where he was and how he had gotten there. Now that they were separated, Beelzebub there was no chance Crowley and the angel would wind up working together a second time. Once had been improbable enough.

The important thing, though, was that Beelzebub could wash their hands of this whole thing with the traitor. They had neutralized the threat, and the council seemed satisfied with their actions. All the loose ends had been tied up, and hell could move on from that embarrassing little episode. No one in hell ever had to go near him again.


End file.
